Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome
by Egglesplork
Summary: No Earthly prison can stop some crazy dude who can tap into the powers of other worlds, knowledge gained from dark texts from THAT fog-enshrouded town. If you don't know what town that is, well... Let's see where Heather ends up in this.
1. Chapter 1

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome_

by Egglesplork

Chapter 1

...

1.

...

Those jack-holes just wouldn't quit. Banging on the walls of his apartment, banging from beneath the floor, banging _from beyond the ceiling, _they were having a Hell-load of fun. At least somebody was having fun, because the dude in this apartment wasn't.

They wouldn't let him sleep. Sometimes they left him alone with the noise. Whenever he felt himself getting all noddy, then they just start it up again. Let a dude sleep, would they? Nah. Those jokers were partying like they were all drunk as skunks and it was the end of the world. And guess what? If the end of the world did take place, there wouldn't be any booze. Drink and be merry! For tomorrow, we are headed for a place in the afterlife where the weather report always says _hot _and _smoky _with a chance of fiery brimstone.

Headed there? Hell, it was feeling like that now. To be tired yet never be able to sleep was a really, really stupid way to be. Sleeping is supposed to be the most natural thing in the world—whatever world one is in at the moment, probably. Some smart-ass from a biology class would probably point out that such a statement probably isn't true, that some animals actually _don't _sleep. But human animals need shut-eye, damn it.

What a joy it would be to just lie down on his bed or even on the floor and just sink into the darkness of oblivion. Just for a little while. Like say, maybe a few thousand years or so. Yeah, several millennia of beddy-bye could really do him heaps of good. Never mind if it was still light out—the orange-reddish sunlight of a dying day filtering through the dirty windows. He'd sleep from sunset now to sunset tomorrow.

About those windows, it was a wonder that anything was visible out of them. They were just downright nasty, all crusty—blurring the sunset-toned scenery of the outside. How dirty were they? Uh-oh. That sounds like the start of a joke! So... Let's dig up a comedian from somewhere, put him in a in a night-time comedy club and get the show started, shall we? It would go…_something like this. _

Thank ya, thank ya...! Ladies and gentlemen, I gotta joke for ya. Course I got jokes! Why else would I be up on stage and dressed like this? Ain't doin' this for my health. With all the second-hand smoke y'all are puttin' out, I couldn't. (_Rr-r-rgh…_) Don't worry, folks! I'm just gettin' _wahmed_ up.

Anyway...! Let's get back to the question. How dirty were his apartment windows? That guy's apartment windows were _so _dirty on the outside that the cockroaches use 'em for mountain-climbing practice! (_Rimshot! Ba-dum, tsh-h-h…_)

No, no... Even bettah! Stop me if ya done heard this one. The windows were _so _dirty that not even a whole street of crack-addicts armed with chisels and battery acid could clean them things!

(_Booh! His jokes suck! Let's skin 'em alive._) Thank ya, thank ya, ladies and germs! Thank ya. Good night. _And go to Hell. _ Then the comedian would run off the stage…

It wasn't the young man's fault the windows were like that, though. He couldn't clean the windows because they were dirty on the _outside_, mind you. What was he going to do, climb out and float in midair to give them a scrub? It was actually more possible for him to float than it was for him to open up the windows, because those suckers were jammed shut forever. So was the door, probably

But no. He didn't want to get out. The young man did not want to leave this apartment. Home is where the heart is, though it more felt like his soul was here. Never mind the crustiness over the windows. The inside was just fine. Looking through dimmed vision at the dirty window in this poorly lit apartment, sitting in this wooden chair, he could barely see the world outside. Orange-red sunlight illuminated the day out there in sunset-colored tones, streets shadowed by some buildings, those buildings softly aglow in that light of the dying day. Outside was... His mind drifted just a little bit about what was out there while a dim darkness of slumber began closing over, consciousness being darkened as thoughts of rotten comedians and vicious hecklers drifted along.

_Thump-thump-thump!_ His head snapped up. They were at it again, _as usual_. Noises and chaos came from the right-side wall. It was like they _knew _that he was drifting off. Trying to sleep on us, eh buddy? You'll sleep not today, not tomorrow and not ever. Put the words _not _and _ever _together, take out two letters, and you get _never. _

Never sleep… As if to confirm the thought, a muffled howling came from beyond the right-side wall. What did they have over there, werewolves? Do werewolves even exist? Even if they did, would they be allowed around here, since werewolves were sort of like big dogs or something? (About pets, landlords hate them. But they don't seem to mind the presence of cockroaches big as cats.) Well, given the way the apartment building's landlord let things go, the presence of a howling, hairy, humanoid beast probably ought not be much of a surprise. That is, if there was anything like a responsible landlord in this place. If there was, the dude would probably be next door and act just as crazy as the rest of those freaks.

Freaks, jerks, bastards, werewolves, even the damned landlord, _everybody _was in adjacent apartments and having a good ol' time! Everyone else was having a time of making him feel like the worst crap in existence. That would be if this even counted for an existence. He didn't even _want _to exist anymore…

Now _there's _an idea. A quick suicide session would put an end to all of this nonsense. Let's talk business. What'll it be? A rope in the closet? Who in tarnation keeps _rope _around at home—besides cowboys? Most folks nowadays are partial to clotheslines for various purposes, but the young man didn't even have that since nobody who lives in the city hangs up laundry unless they want to smell like smog all day. How about a slashed wrist? No, with wrist-slashing, it's double or nothing. Otherwise, you just wake up with blood messing up your fine duds. What about…a bellyful of sleep-time fun-pills? Oops! Forget that last one. There is no sleep for you, buckaroo. Then again, this is all pretty moot since you can't kill yourself if you're already dead. So, so sorry.

_Thump-thump-thump! _There they go again. The jerks were banging from _beneath the apartment floor _and _beyond the walls _and _beyond the ceiling_… Don't forget about banging from above the ceiling! They were banging the heck out of that ceiling of his. That was a bit poetic. Let's see…

Their floor was his ceiling, which was all the more demeaning. They were banging on the floor, kept it up even more. A world full of dread, and all of that noise was going on above his head. All he had to do was think about suicide, and they were suddenly… What rhymes with suicide that would fit? Bonafide? It rhymes, but it doesn't make much sense. Snide? Hmmph… Not strong enough. So, what would be a really good way to call them _stupid _in rhyme?

No, that's wrong. He couldn't call them stupid. He could call them jack-holes, jerks, psychos, fools, mother-forkers, Neanderthals, chuckleheads and all manners of names. But he just could not call them on intelligence because—truth was—they were really smart. Maybe _too smart_. They seemed to _know _some things. He wasn't sure how, but he had the idea that those freaks banging from beyond the walls, floor and ceiling knew a lot more than he could ever know. In fact, he had the creeping suspicion that, somehow…it was like they sometimes even knew what he was thinking.

_That's psycho_, he thought. Psycho, not psychic or telepathic—if not pathetic. There is no way that they could read his mind. Everybody knows that mind-reading is only the stuff of LSD-dosed sci-fi writers and paranoiacs in psychiatric wards. No such thing as that stuff.

_Ba-bang_, came the noise from the right-side wall as soon as he thought about how mind-reading can't exist. Really? He gave a mental pause and thought out a question. _Bang twice if you think I'm dumber than you_.

He instantly got his noisy response. Would it be too much to believe that he heard two bangs coming from the right-side wall? Ask ye for bangs, and bangs ye shall receive.

No friggin' way… Maybe he only _thought _he heard two bangs. Maybe it was actually _one _banging from behind the wall, and he was just so shocked from the coincidence that he just imagined the second bang. He just miscounted, is all. Well, gosh 'em-golly! If he forgot how to count, maybe he ought to go back to pre-school and sit very quietly on the carpet while Miss Florffenhuffler (who was called or _Miss Fluff _because there was no way a bunch of little munchkins that age were able to wrap their cute lil' minds around too many syllables) taught everybody how to count. Altogether now, class! This is how we count our numbers. _O-o-one… Two-o-o… Three-e-e-e…_

Two… It stopped at _two _bangs—a double shot, _bang-bang_. Like the pounding equivalent of going _uh-huh_. Did they know what he was thinking sometimes? _Bang-bang! Uh-huh_.

He didn't imagine _that _noise_. _"Get out!" he shouted from where he sat. "Get the Hell away from here! This is my apartment! _I deserve some peace...and...quiet...!_"

Did they make noises after that? Does a bear crap in the woods? (Or in this case, does a cockroach crap in the wooden cabinets?) The answer to those questions would be _yes. _Not only did they banging, they were throwing in some extra sound-effects too—noises coming by the band-load. Meanwhile, even more _banging _and _thumping _with even more _moaning _with more _howling _came from _behind the walls _and from _beneath the floor _and _beyond the ceiling _(can't forget the ceiling) and _everywhere else_. It was getting so intense that he thought the whole damned place was going to cave in. He looked at the window and worried about it breaking. Goodness knows what kind of nasty air was out there. The window might not handle it, the window with all of its crusty dirtiness outside that not even a street-load of money-desperate drug-addicts could get clean while sentient insects with slick brown-shelled bodies went mountain-climbing on the outer surface in the meanwhile. Hey Franny! Secure that safety line! We're almost at the summit... Hee-hee! "_Just shut the Hell up, you noisy freaks!_"

They did. Just like that, all the banging and thumps with the howling and moaning sounds were silenced for the moment. _That's more like it_, he thought. Then came a _bang-bang _of agreement in response to the thought. Uh-huh. We agree_._

Ah, screw it. He didn't bother to say anything after that. If they were going to make all the noise they wanted, there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe they could read his mind. _Bang-bang. _Two bangs, that means _yes-yes._

_How-w-w smart are they? _(Yup, it's the comedian again. Looks like the crowd didn't skin 'em alive after all. Not yet at least.) They were _so smart _that the dumbest among them had more brains than a morgue full of dead college professors after a plague! (Ba-dum, _tsh-h-h..._) Then a person would start to wonder how those brains would taste. Knowing those freaks next door, they probably wouldn't mind finding out. Inquiring minds want to know how brains taste. After all, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

They probably knew _that _too. _Bang-bang! _The young man just nodded his head in agreement because he knew that _they _know a lot. Maybe brains taste like chicken? _Bang! _If a double bang was the affirmative, then a single bang was what they were giving him a _no. _Brains do _not _taste like poultry—not fried, baked, sautéed, sauced, chopped, raw, processed or pure. So what _do _brains taste like? Pork grease? 

Come to think of it, if they were so smart, then why couldn't they figure out what to do with him? They let him stay in this apartment for goodness knows _how _long even if they did bang a lot. And it's not like they made a mistake in letting him stay here.It just could be that they had a very good reason for keeping him here for some reason. Something like this happened to someone named Henry Townsend, for those who took interest in such matters.

…

2.

…

Gather 'round, folks. This-here little vignette is the ballad of Henry Townsend. (How can something be a vignette and a ballad at the same time?) Quiet down in front! You're not telling the story. Anyway… Here goes.

Henry was a young man who lived in an apartment much like this one, not being able to get out_. _Rumor was that some reporter guy disappeared in the apartment and was never heard from again, rumors of his apartment being _haunted_. Henry didn't give a damn. He was just one of those people that were so calm and quiet-like that they didn't even get loud when they were angry.

Maybe Henry-boy should've listened to those rumors, because one day…_his door got locked up tight all by itself. _Chains came out of nowhere and appeared on his door. These were some really _good _chains, probably magical or cursed chains too. Magic, curses, the same thing if you really think about it. He couldn't break the chains or undo the locks. Henry-boy was trapped in his own apartment. Don't get sassy and say that he should've jumped out a windows, because the windows were jammed too.

Yes-sir-ee-Bob… The guy was trapped in his own residence by unknown forces, like some kind of house-arrest, and the rest of the world is abso-freaking-loutely ignorant of what happened. The rest of the world probably wouldn't even believe how he was trapped. He was trapped…until he began to do the bidding of strange, unknown forces not of this world—or so he said. The rest of the apartment building was the same way.

After later escaping from the whole apartment building with his girlfriend and (somehow) the landlord, Henry-boy had some stories to tell—sounding like urban ghost stories. Stories, everybody likes stories. People like that guy up in Maine or over in California make millions of dollars off of them. And, goodness gracious, did Henry-boy's stories sell. He became briefly famous in the local news. A person wouldn't think that the stiff-neck city people of modern journalism would take to those sorts of stories, but they did. The journalists will do anything for extra ratings—like those occasional blurbs about odd sights on security camera recordings and people claiming to have caught weird animals.

People just thought that Henry Townsend was maybe a little nuts, and so most of them forgot about him at some point. Whole apartment complexes full of people disappearing? _Monsters _and a _ghost _killed them? _Ri-i-i-ight… _Things like that don't happen in real life because… Well, that's just crazy. That's all. There are no such thing as ghosts, werewolves, vampires, abominable snowmen, creatures under the bed, things in the closet (unless you count those female talk-show hosts who cut her hair short and dress like men), fairies (don't say it), leprechauns, the Loch Ness monster, space aliens, or modern-day demons, damn it. Like honest politicians, things like that just don't exist.

In fact, a lot of _other _stuff doesn't exist either. Global warming? Nah, nobody believes _that _crap. That's just a _conspiracy theory _cooked up by drugged-up hippies to discredit conservative politicians. Psychics, they aren't real either. They don't _really _predict the future. Those jokers are just con-artists TV out to trick rubes into emptying their wallets. UFO talk is for people who make money off of book deals and conventions over in Roswell, New Mexico for about those crazy people who think those little gray men come down from space in flying saucers to perform acts of amateur surgery on livestock. You want to see amateur surgery on cattle? Okay, put on a pair of calf-length boots with anti-slip soles and to any slaughterhouse. Don't forget to bring guts strong enough to withstand the sight.

Okay, so they let Henry Townsend have his day of fame. Then the news back to talking about more important things, like millionaires getting more money, celebrities having lots of sex with other celebrities and all the violent warfare in other countries.

…

3.

…

It's _all _crazy talk. Never-mind how police departments sometimes hire psychics to deal with some disappearance cases and train them in some abilities. Never-mind how the FBI has been completely unable to explain bloodless acts of cattle mutilation despite over thirty years of investigation. And while you're at it, never-mind the fact that ninety-nine percent of the world's scientists say global warming is a problem while ninety-nine percent of the world's ruling families say that it isn't. In fact... Just never-mind everything crazy and stupid. Just throw all the crazy people and their crazy ideas in the loony bin. Bunch of drugged-up, crystal-gazing hippies who think they can predict a future wrecked with global warming while channeling their mental energies to summon their space-brothers from another world. It's a lot easier to call those people crazy than... Well, just don't think about that craziness.

Just maybe the young man sitting in this apartment was one of those crazies himself and didn't know it. Maybe he spent too much time reading those books about ghosts, flying saucers, and what-not—especially books about ghosts. Those things are pretty easy to find and buy around here. Or rather, they _were _when he was able to leave this apartment. Just as the flying saucer followers out in the American west have the City of Roswell, the locals who believe in ghosts and such have Silent Hill.

There's a major difference, though. Roswell is a gigantic tourist spot. Everybody in Roswell is alive and having a rockin' good time with talk of bug-eyed little gray men flittering around in circular craft. Endless flying saucer conventions and perpetual talk of that sort, it's like a party that never stops. Meanwhile, Silent Hill won't ever see a party again. Silent Hill is dead_. _

Ever hear the term _ghost town _before? (Hey, I gotta joke for ya!) Joking aside, a ghost town is essentially a place that has simply become uninhabited, if not permanently uninhabitable. Silent Hill is dead because it is condemned, plain and simple. Can't buy land there because real-estate jerks won't sell it. The real-estate people blame the government. Go to government bureaucrats, and they'll tell you that the real-estate people are giving you the run-around. So just _fill out these forms, _and _we'll get back to you. _Meanwhile, they'll suggest that you speak with the real-estate agencies with holdings in the area…

Get back to you? They never do. Neither do real-estate agencies. Real-estate people say to blame government. Government people say to blame real-estate people. It's circular. That's why they call it a run-around—making people go from place to place, asking for permission to buy land or have other dealings with Silent Hill.

If somebody just gets fed up with the nonsense and tries to have an actual look at the legendary place, even that is difficult. Driving there, one finds that the roads going into the town are out. In other words, the roads _in _are _out. _As in, barricades are up. Whole streets have somehow been chopped off to make cliffs. Then there's that fog.

Ah yes, about the fog… They said a person can _see things _in that odd gray mist. People hear things, odd noises. Maybe they heard footsteps, maybe claws or the flapping of wings. But the fog disappeared for a good long while. It came back recently, though.

By the way, remember that Henry Townsend guy? He said that the man responsible for making almost everybody in that apartment complex disappear was originally from (you guessed it) Silent Hill.

This was an awful lot like the Henry Townsend setup, except that the young man wasn't necessarily trapped against his will. It was just that he didn't want to leave. In that they let him stay, albeit keeping up that noise, the fact remained that they wanted something from him.

"So...!" he began aloud, sitting in the glow of the light shining through the dirty window—light from a dying day. "What do you want? You're not keeping me around for kicks and giggles, that's for sure."

_Blink-flicker...! _He quick-turned his head to look at what just flickered. The electric lamp next to the sofa had just blinked on and off, the light bulb giving off a double-flare of illumination before turning back off again. But he would've _sworn _that he had that lamp off. He was in the habit of leaving electrical appliances _off_ during daylight hours—a habit borne of having to pay for electricity and having been raised by parents who did the same, who in turn had parents who did the same. _We're not made out of money. _

Because his parents had bodies of living flesh and bone instead of hard-curled currency bound to golden skeletons, the young man here learned to leave things turned off when not in use. Except…those dudes from beyond the apartment walls didn't care who was made out of money and who wasn't when it came to paying electric bills because nobody around here has to pay them. In fact, the young man sitting here hasn't seen a bill of any kind in goodness-knows-how-long. Don't ask where the electricity comes from anymore, because the young man who lives here didn't bother to think too hard about questions like that. All he knew that the electricity worked even when and where it wasn't supposed to work, like with that electric lamp just now. _Flick-flicker…_

He thought, _You're trying to tell me something, aren't you? _Something thump-rattled in the walls—a gentler form of the double bang. _You want me to guess or something, like some kind of game show? What'll I win if I get the right answer? A free trip to the tropical location of my choice and a lifetime supply of chorkumbleff? Don't know what chorkumbleff is, but I'm sure you'll fill me in on that. No? How about a nice new toaster? Everybody seems to win one of those even if almost nobody wants another one. _

Thumping and moaning came from the ceiling. The thumping sounded angry at such irreverent thoughts, yet the moaning sounded downright miserable—like they were feeling sick with sadness.

They sounded terrible, basically. He never remembered them sounding so bad. Something was definitely not right. What could they possibly want from him now, after all of this time? No, that is the wrong line of thinking. This is the big reveal. This is when they were going to tell him what they needed him for.

He stood up. "What's going on here? Whatever's bothering you, I can't help if I don't know what I can do. What _can _I do?"

Then came rumbling and roaring from beyond the walls, floor and ceiling. It wasn't just them making a ruckus. This felt more like an earthquake. The apartment floor started rattling and shaking like all get-out. It was suddenly as if this whole building was ground-zero for the kind of earth-shaker that would wipe out half of California some day. Good-golly Miss Molly, because it's bye-bye Miss American Pie! What'd they call that big earthquake again, the one that was supposed to dump half of California into the ocean? Oh yeah, they said it was going to be _the Big One_. As the young man swayed and shimmied with his arms out and feet positioned forward-and-back surfer-style, he thought about the near-apocalyptic effects of a major tectonic event. This probably wasn't The Big One, but it felt like something pretty significant. Just when the young man didn't think he could take it any more and was about to fall over like someone who forgot how to walk, the living room door to his apartment..._opened up. _

It was…_the way out of this apartment. _Out from the walls being banged on for so long. Out and away from the window that was so grimy on the outside that drug addicts would never get it clean and roaches wouldn't want cleaned. Outside of this apartment and through the doorway was a golden glow, like the gentle illuminating warmth of a thousand lost sunsets—bringing to mind all the colors of yesterdays gone by...

The young man suddenly felt very afraid. "Please don't make me go back there. There's nothing for me. Can't you find somebody else? I can't do it."

In response, the moaning from beyond the ceiling became more demanding. This time, the young man could feel the dark misery from which the sounds came. He just had to go. _This _was why he was here. Instead of leaving the young man to vanish into the void, they had him in this apartment and chose him for this very task—however large that task would be.

He began taking steps to the golden brightness. He may have been trapped in his apartment before, but it wasn't necessarily a bad thing considering what was in other places. Yet they needed him to go out and do something even if it hurt like Hell. And maybe, something that could be called Hell was involved_. Beyond the light..._

_..._

4.

...

Somewhere else, off in a forest so deep that it was practically a nature preserve, the massive fortress-like place of gray concrete walls was a hard contrast to its location. Gray blocky towers rose up from a foundation of concrete and asphalt amidst all the greenery. The blocky towers themselves were made of that kind of smooth polished concrete which was highly weather-resistant and low-cost at the same time. Such design made it perfectly suitable for public institutions ranging from college dormitories and mental institutions (which weren't too different from each other, all things considered) to high-security prisons.

This wasn't a psychiatric institution full of college students, nor was it a dorm full of mental patients. So if it wasn't one or the other, which was it? Yes, it's a jail—one great big forking _mother _of a jail, which people would probably think was Hell on Earth.

Of course the penitentiary was nothing so burningly dramatic as Hell, nor was it anything at all like Heaven. Heaven? Oh _Hells no. _It's no fun. Life at this place for the mostly involuntary inhabitants was not the most thrilling of places most of the time, but it was not allowed to be physically torturous even if it was mentally so. Nobody would be physically tortured here because even people like mass murderers, serial rapists, and corporate fraudsters have _civil rights _under the state and federal constitutions. Prisoners cannot be given any forms of _cruel and unusual punishment. _That meant no fun stuff, like strapping folks to torture devices for the sake of making their bodies bleed, their bones break, or their voices come out like choked screams. So sorry, there'll be no getting medieval on anybody today even if the place did have the look of a modern-day castle on the outside.

So this massive, fortress-like place off in a forest is a penitentiary, a slammer, a _big-house_. Big…friggin'…deal! What's so damned special about just another great big oversized lockup?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, the population is said to be _largely _involuntary. At least one person in the prison is there simply because he chooses to be. He could leave any time he wanted and did so occasionally. He just found the penitentiary to be a laughably convenient place for his…_works_. Those works so happened to be continuations of things once practiced in that crazy town of fog which everybody seems to know about. Everybody knows but nobody cares because anything affiliated with _that _town is really just crazy stuff.

…

"I'm not going to tell you his name," began the big-faced man, his big-bellied body covered with tailored clothes—a pin-striped black business suit and vest. He thought he looked snazzy, but he actually looked like someone out of the American 1920s who bootlegged booze and battled it out with Tommy guns instead of someone in an important public office. "No, not going to tell you at all. In fact, if you think anybody will tell you his name, forget it. Not happening."

Since the big-faced man talking was wearing expensive business clothes, it was quite appropriate that he talk trash from behind a great big expensive-looking desk. That desk was more to impress people than it was to do much in the way of paperwork. Paperwork is what _secretaries _are for! In addition to doing all the paperwork, secretaries also good for the occasional sexual favor.

An important man's desk serves the same purpose as the shiny thing a monarch puts on his head. That is, it serves no practical purpose at all—other than something to bend the secretaries over for a quickie. Even if important people are often stupid as tree stumps and probably just as physically active, they tend to get lots of impressive furniture and flashy clothes. Oh, and important men get heaped with lots and lots of money just because they know the right people, dress up in expensive clothes and know how to recite memorized speeches—those speeches written by other people a Hell of a lot smarter than they are.

Since the big-faced important man here was _the warden_ of this grand institution of incarceration, he had on the most over-priced clothes, the best-looking desk and a big comfy chair to go with it. He also needs a really big expensive chair too…for hold that big fat ass of his. The inside of the chair must be made of the same sort of metal alloy used to make construction vehicles, by the way, because your typical run-of-the-mill steel-core office furniture could probably not hold up that much weight.

"Now I didn't hear you ask for his name," continued the warden, that big-faced man sitting behind the desk, "but I know that you're going to want to know it at some point. I know how people think. I'm smart in ways, and people like me are in charge because we're smart in those ways."

That wasn't exactly the truth. The big-face man became warden because his uncle was part of a very important committee in the senate. His brother was mayor of the town, what little town existed in this heavily forested region. Something happened to the last warden, so they needed a replacement—someone who has important relatives in the senate and the municipal government… You can draw the connections from there.

"I'm telling you ahead of time so you don't start asking too many questions…_like his name,_" continued the warden because he just likes to hear himself talk and sound all important.

Talking important and exercising his legally granted power of being a warden, just being a man of power, it's all about a man's power over other people. Now that really raises the ol' crotch-tower and feels good. After he left for the afternoon, it'd be time for one of those sexual favors from a secretary. Never mind if the secretary was maybe an illegitimate niece.

"So don't ask about the odd prisoner," finished up the warden. (Yes, the fat-ass was finally shutting up.) "It's just not a good idea to ask for what you can't get. Got it?"

"Yes, sir!" responded the prison-guard who was being spoken to all this time. _Yes sir _was all he would say at this point. Do not speak unless spoken to. Everything is _yes-sir _and _no-sir_ as is taught in training.

…

The underling to whom the warden was talking was named John Wright—a newly hired prison guard. Fresh out of corrections training, he was here to do a good job—yes sir, yes ma'am. He stood with hands behind his back, the back straight and feet apart—his pressed dark-blue uniform as fresh as his professional attitude. So he stood here and took every word very seriously.

Thing is, John Wright was hired up because something happened to the last one, just like how something happened to the previous warden. That previous prison guard left off working here in good physical condition. And they say the guy is still is physically health. After all, psychiatric institutions these days tend to take good care of their patients' physical health.

That's right! That last prison guard was someone who had _lost his mind. _Rumor had it that the prisoner being talked about—the one whom shall not be named by the warden—had something to do with it.

Later, questions in various sizes, shapes and forms ran rampant through the new prison guard's mind even while he followed his colleague out of the warden's office. There ought not be anything extraordinary about just one more prisoner—the _odd prisoner_. What was so special about him? Was the odd prisoner a convicted serial killer, going for a high score in human lives? That couldn't be it, because there were more than a few killers of humans in this prison—nothing special about butchering folks around here. Was the odd prisoner…a rapist? Not even if he was a molester of women _or _men, was he a rapist of the corporate sort—raping the stockholders' holdings? A few of that sort were here too. How about…drug kingpin? Guess what? Guess again, because that wasn't special either. Even if he was any of those things, even if he was _all _of those things, it would still not make the odd prisoner be an outstanding member of the convicted populace.

What made the odd prisoner so special was that he could do things that were maybe not supposed to be possible. The people running the place didn't understand how. What they once saw on surveillance cameras that looked into the odd prisoner's cell, along with what they saw painted on his cell's wall, what the odd prisoner _did _with those strange symbols he painted on the wall—painted with a substance that looked suspiciously like blood_._ Rumors within rumors said that the odd prisoner himself only painted some of those strange symbols and how some of them…_painted themselves. _The people running this place didn't like any of that crazy talk and just left it all alone.

The new prison-guard, Mr. John Wright, he didn't know the rumors. All that he knew was that he was here to do his job—part of which included not trying to get the name of the odd prisoner. Too bad, because the odd prisoner's doings were going to make things very interesting soon enough.


	2. Chapter 2

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

"Faith"

lyrics and vocals by Natalie Walker

Chapter 2

…

1.

…

Today, the girl had dressed in her usual outfit of jeans and sleeveless top, both of which were tight enough to show the slender and nearly starved-looking shape of her body. Dollar-store canvas sneakers went on her feet, and a homemade artsy sort of cloth choker around her neck completed the outfit. The look was completed with a hairdo of fluffy blonde hair that framed her face—a sort of cutesy face with big deep-set hazel eyes and features that seemed otherwise delicate save for her sort of pouty lips. All dressed down and nowhere to be right now which was _exactly _like how the girl liked it. At a party, somebody got angry and asked why the girl dressed like trailer-trash. The girl's response was a question about someone else dressing like someone who earns money from sexual favors.

Today wasn't a party. This was just a typical day, which was nearly over—getting to be around that time when the dying day's sunlight is cast sideways as shadows deepen into night. Indeed, darkness was almost here. And if someone was psychic for real, that person would understand that statement in more ways than one…

Right now, the girl-in-question was sitting at her apartment's dining table set next to a set of glass-sliding doors—her eyes and mind steeped in a great big novel while dreamy urban music chimed through the radio. The girl called it a kitchen table even if this low-budget apartment building didn't have rooms with real kitchens. Instead, this apartment had one of those partitioned off little areas called kitchenettes. Well, anyway… The book was about ghosts—a family of rich-important people dealing with dead people who came back to raise some Hell. _Ghost Story _was the title. Hmm… It wasn't exactly the most _original _storyline. (Hmm, evil forces from beyond making trouble for the living, where did a person hear _that one _before?) And the girl would tell it to the author's face that the title really sucks. _Ghost Story? _Jeez… The only reason why the girl bought it on her regular trip to the mall bookstore was because it—the book—was in the same vein of stuff that her father used to write.

The girl's name is Heather Mason. _H _and _M _are the initials, the same as her dead father's—as in the writer. Yes, Heather Mason is the daughter of the not-so-famous-but-still-famous Harry Mason. (More on that later.) And _yes, _Heather knows how important her father's works are to a lot of people. _No, _Heather has no plans of getting a start on her own writing career any time soon—like her father. So just quit it with the same questions already!

Truth was, Heather really missed her dad. Mom died a lifetime ago and really couldn't be missed. Now dad, he was always there and was a really good guy. He wasn't one of those types to booze it up all the time, and he read just about as much as he watched television. When one's job just means sitting at a word-processing computer for half-a-dozen hours a day and _maybe _going out to talk to other people in the business once in a blue moon, he didn't do much bad-boy adventuring. Not anymore, at least. Being a _good guy, _though, shouldn't be misunderstood as being a weakling-sissy. Dad was tough. He did have to shoot somebody once, among doing some other things that Heather wouldn't talk about. Yeah, he had this quiet sort of strength and a lot of it—a really solid and quiet sort of guy who wore buttoned shirts and vests with blue jeans. As to why he wore jeans with office-type shirts, it's one of those things writers do—that whole down-to-earth but deeply wise deal going on with the tastes in clothes.

About that not-so-famous-but-still-famous thing… Dad wasn't the most widely known writer to most people. He wasn't exactly all over the place like that writer who writes about a cowboy in an alternate reality fighting monsters and demons, nor was he like that dog-loving writer who did those stories about crash-landed alien technology filling towns with (you guessed it) monsters. Still, Harry Mason's work has a sort of hard-core cult followings in parts of the English-speaking world. Some groups of people devour his books, holding reading groups and what-not everywhere from Athens (the city California, not in Greece) to New Zealand (which is a country even if some people don't know where it is). The literary agents who handled her dad's books really wanted Heather to start signing some movie deals to cash in on that cult following. It'd be as big as that movie with the crazy guy who talks to that demon in the rabbit costume, said the agents. Heather didn't care much about demons in rabbit costumes and didn't agree.

What Heather _did _have to do, though, was attend interviews to help fulfill some weird lawyer-installed clause in the contracts her dad signed. Not that the contracts intended Heathergive the interviews, but the contracts had clauses which stated that _the signed party hereby agrees to the granting of interviews and other reasonable publicity related activities which are put forth for the sake of promoting the works of the before-mentioned signed party, signed herein. _Note, the contracts with the literary agent's didn't say _who _had to give the interviews, just that the interviews be given. Since dad wasn't around anymore, guess who has to talk to the journalists?

Damned lawyers, Heather wished her dad would've shot and killed one of them instead. Shoot lots of them. That's because Heather had to deal with an interview tomorrow. Joy of joys, and today was almost a done deal too.

Some reporter was going to be at a bookstore to give the usual set of questions. And it was all too likely that the reporter planned on throwing in some rather spicy questions about Heather having _tons of money _being unspent in various bank accounts and maybe her of once having had a _love interest_…of the same sex?

The resulting magazine article would be just as ridiculously scandalous if the literary agents didn't have a grip on some of the publicity. The publishers and literary agents had lawyers on call if the titles _did _go off the wall like that. So from the interviews, there would be absolutely _no_ articles with titles like "Sexy Rich Daughter of Cult Scary-Book Author and Her Lesbian Orgy Adventures." Heather never attended any orgies recently, those past ones not worth talking about. And no way did the girl want to end up being depicted as the Paris Hilton of the literary world. The lawyers could make sure that didn't happen.

On second thought… Don't shoot the lawyers, at least not the really useful ones. Keep the ones around who keep crap from being written about the girl. And keep around those who kept some publishers of her dad's past works honest and paying, even getting a little more cash out in the process. Never mind if Heather really doesn't care too much about yet another hundred thousand in the bank, or at least one of the banks that handled her loot. A lake wouldn't care much about a few more drops of water, would it?

Screw it. Heather wasn't thinking about all of her money. More to the point was that interview which had to be attended for legal reasons. And no, Heather wasn't going to think about the _damned spicy questions _that the reporter was probably absolutely itching to ask. It was likely an itch that didn't come from the hands but was probably related to itches of a more _carnal _sort, said with a wink of the eye and a nudge of the elbow. _Everybody's _got that itch past a certain point of physical development, eh? Wink-wink, nudge-nudge? Yes, all the news reporters _loved _sex and scandal because—allegedly—it's what _everybody _wants to read about. Sex, money, and intrigue are the lowest common denominators, and the reporter types for the magazines and television can't shut up about them—thinking that the same-old scandals, porn and money subjects will keep their subscription and viewership ratings from being shot to Hell.

None of that mattered—not money, not those reporters, not the crap on television or in cheap-floozy magazines. It was just her, sitting at the same kitchen table her dad sat at, reading a surprisingly cool book and listening to some dreamy music while the late-day light deepened outside. Heather got up to turn on the light.

Now, back to what was being done before. Good book and good music, this was part of heaven. Heather wasn't really listening to the music's lyrics but was just drifting along with the sweet melody while enjoying the book. The female vocalist on the radio was singing some particularly interesting lyrics, though…

_I feel the wave of destiny wash over my helpless body_

_I can't seem to find my way_

_The air is thick and foggy…_

_What do you say_

…_do you say to fate?_

_What do you say_

…_do you say to fate?_

_All these _thoughts _abound my mind _

_I wait for rescue and for a sign!_

_I cannot kneel_

_I'm out of time_

_I'm face to face_

…_with my insides_

_I felt so _bound _by mindless ways_

…_as life unfolds so does my faith_

_I've burned all paths that lead to peace!_

_Now all of them feel sympathy…_

The song sank into instrumentals for a little while... Anyone who even had the slightest hint of a whisper of an idea of a rumor about Heather's life would have suddenly taken very keen interest in what was coming out of that little corner-store radio, the one sitting atop this-here kitchen table.

Heather wasn't paying attention. No, the girl's mind was blissfully lost in that surprisingly good book while her ears just took in the _laa-dee-daa _prettiness of the music and not really the lyrics. As for lyrics… But wait, there's more! Continued the beautifully dreamy song…

_I'm singled out_

_My soul is pinned_

_I'm trapped in a state of question_

_I try to run away_

…_but finding an answer beckons._

_How do you try, do you try to live?_

_How do you try, do you try to live?_

A great many other lyrics went on from there, a deliciously wonderful tune by a female singer whose music sort of went in the same kind of mood of the book that the girl was reading. It all seemed to mesh so perfectly. It was just coincidence that those lyrics played at exactly this time, right?

Yeah, right… Still being unaware of the lyrics playing on the radio, the girl suddenly felt thirsty. It's really bad when one can feel the thirst—the mouth getting all dry. Yuck. It wasn't just something that gradually happened. It was like something in the air just suddenly made it happen.

The girl got up out of her seat once again and went into the kitchenette, over into the little partitioned-off corner of the apartment's living space with the kitchen stove and—more importantly—the faucet. Clean glasses were kept in the upper tier of the dishwasher because it beat having to put them on the too-high shelves all the time. The girl wasn't exactly the tallest person in the world, and it was a real pain in the butt having to go on tip-toes or stand on top of something to reach the cabinets above the sink where dishes are supposed to go. Now the question is for those who'd ask, if all of one's drinking glasses and dishes were kept in the dishwasher, how can a person tell the difference between clean and dirty? Duh, just keep the dirty dishes on the lower rung.

On second thought, Heather didn't bother to reach into the dishwasher for any clean glasses. Nah. The girl did what any teenager would do when the parents weren't around, just leaned over and turned her head sideways and turned on the tap to drink right out of the faucet. Nineteen years old is legally being an adult while still being a teenager, so the girl was still okay to do this by most counts. Or maybe Heather could just keep on dressing like trailer trash (tight-ass jeans, tank tops and dollar-store sneakers, y'all), drinking out of faucets and leaving the dishes in the dishwasher until the grand ol' age of ninety-nine. Yup, Heather was going to be the oldest teenager in existence. Who knows. Maybe by then, the scientists could come up with a technology to keep everybody looking like they're just barely legal adults forever. So how about _that!_ "_Chumpw-a-a-a-h!_"

Heather yanked herself away from the faucet, almost bumped a side of her mouth on the faucet while doing so. Her mouth still dribbled water, a brush of slender fingertips quickly wiping away the excess wetness.

Someone or something outside had made a too-loud noise. It was like nothing the girl had heard before. It sounded like an animal, but it also sounded like a word. Creepier still, Heather almost had the idea that the word meant something to her somehow. _What the Hell was that?_

"_R-o-o-n fa-a-ah! Nis, mork,_" came more roared sounds, sounding loud and yet oddly articulate. No way could the source of that be human, even if what came out sounded like some kind of words. If something was using words, and it wasn't human, then it had to be a parrot or…something else. And that didn't sound like a parrot, either. Didn't even sound like something from this world. _Oh no, _thought Heather_. Not again. _

Yes, again. Something was happening. After not even two years of trying to get her life together and trying to be normal, something really bad was coming to cause some trouble. And the girl had the idea that the trouble was most probably out in the parking lot. Some kind of sense made her feel that to be about right—some kind of other sense which also told her what those strange words meant.

The girl knew what had to be done. Going back to the table, the girl used quivering hands to put a bookmark in her book. First, make sure that her house-key was still in her left pocket—along with little things like her state ID (no driver's license) and a few folded bills of spending money. A person would otherwise wonder how the pockets of such tight jeans could hold anything. They couldn't, which is why most women carry purses. Heather didn't like to be burdened down by too much stuff and didn't bother. Besides, purses are just open-air invitations to muggers. Hey guys! I'm carrying my money and other important stuff _here. _Come snatch it off my right shoulder. Then again, Heather never really had to worry about danger from muggers because the girl could take care of herself—having picked up a few tricks since the events around the death of her father. What kind of tricks? You'll see…

…

If it just seemed like late day before, it seemed even closer to nightfall outside now—out here in the apartment's rear parking lot. It was also surprisingly lonely out here, nobody on the sidewalk or anywhere else around. In fact, the sound of scampering feet matched the rapid movement of someone running the fork _away _from here. They weren't running from Heather, because nobody runs from somebody short and cute. No, they were running from what was in the parking lot.

Imagine a generally human-looking body… Okay, now imagine half the upper body being taken up with a head so big that it even occupies part of the chest. To hold up such a massive head, it would take a surprisingly thick pair of legs and super bodybuilder's torso. Make that a really muscled pair of legs so thick that they look like dinosaur legs. So add that into the mix—a really thick pair of legs and arms that would put a governor of California to shame. Now cover that big-headed ugly bastard with skin that was fish-belly white with a great deal of open sores. Got all that? A really pale thing with a really, _really _big head and thick dinosaur-muscled leg.

Now imagine its really big mouth open. And it's hobbling really fast in this direction, too. That was the thing which shouted _chumpwah _earlier. Whatever _chumpwah _means, it doesn't mean it's going to run up close for the sake of giving Heather a hug. Why the heck do monsters always want to run up close to a person anyway? Can't they learn to throw spears or something? Then again, they're not known for their brains—which is a real shame in this case since the thing running up close has a head big enough to hold maybe a dozen chunks of human-sized think-meat.

Here we go… Heather inhaled and gently let out the breath, let herself relax. The monster was still running up close, running up close, running up close. Meanwhile, the girl was just standing here and looking calm…

Some people would probably be thinking, _What the fork are you doing, girl! _There is a friggin' creature like something out of some psycho's nightmare running full speed in your direction! It indeed seemed like a surprisingly agile creature for something with such a huge head. But Heather already knew that the thing couldn't win like that. Probably nothing alive could beat her, not ever again.

With her mind relaxed and focused, Heather thought a certain way. And something…_changed in the air. _Something invisible attacked.

That something _whacked _the creature on the side of the head. Why not, since that gigantic noggin made such a tasty target? Fallen on its side, before the creature could even try to get up, sharp blows from the unseen attackers landed on the creature's huge head and hugely muscled body. Even though the pale creature's skin was already with open sores, fresh wounds opened up. Indeed, the things that attacked the creature probably had claws—claws sharp enough to open a skull, which was _exactly _what happened. The invisible claws of the unseen attackers took apart the head. They took apart the body. And they took apart the parts which came off of the body, too. And the hits just kept on coming.

It took an effort for Heather to make the attacks stop. By now, the massive-headed thing was clearly dead meat. Whereas it was once a big-headed thing with a clearly defined (albeit nasty-looking) body and was able to stand there on two messed-up legs, now the thing was totally smashed and obliterated. Come to think of it, the thing now looked like a gigantic meat pancake with bits and pieces all over the place. Maybe some fingers were left, but that was about it. _At least now the cops can't tell what it was, _thought Heather as…_the headaches came. Oh yeah. This was a real hum-dinger of a headache. _

With her head crammed full of pain and her vision slightly blurred over, the girl staggered and turned herself around. "_N-n-n-ngh…!_" was her inarticulate and bitten-back cry of suffering, a yell that the girl bit back on because screaming would just bring attention to herself. Her right hand to a side of her head, left hand feeling the way forward through a haze of misery, it was sheer torture. The rear entrance to the apartment was that way.

_Click-clomp…_ That was the sound of the apartment door's rear entrance opening. The girl squinted to see. Out came maybe half a dozen people who also lived in the apartment building and saw what just happened. Some of the guys gave glances to her body but returned their gaze to the sight in the middle of the parking lot before they could be called pervs. A sexy chick in tight clothes and the remains of something dead, both things were too cool for male eyes to pass up.

Here come the dumb-ass questions. You okay, Heather? (Everybody knows her name because, after all, the girl _was _the super-rich lesbian daughter of a dead writer with a loyal following. Jerks…) What was that thing? You're not bleeding. We didn't see it hit you, but did it hit you?

Whatever it was, it's dead now—looking like somebody had run over a giant albino animal with a steam-roller and made a mess. Maybe it was some kind of zoo animal, too. Yeah, that's gotta be it, a _zoo animal. _That's what it was, right Heather? Some kind of elephant-ape with its skin messed up. Should we call the police? No, stated somebody, we should really call the animal control-people. And don't go near that thing. You could catch whatever disease it had to make it that way.

…

2.

…

Heather was barely conscious of having unlocked and opened her apartment door, slamming it behind her with distant sounds of people talking out in the hall. By now, _both _sides of her head were giving her the works. Now it's two—yes _two_—headaches for the price of just one head. The girl had both hands on the source of her agony and sank to her knees on the apartment floor as the electrifying pain inside overwhelmed her.

Having this much pain in just _one_ noggin is probably not supposed to be possible. Wasn't a person supposed to black out after all of this? A typical human being overcome with pain is supposed to lapse into unconsciousness when things get to be too much. Then again, Heather wasn't just like typical people.

After a good long while, the headache did begin to let up on her. It wasn't _totally _gone, mind you. (Mind you, ha-ha.) Rather, it was more like the pain and suffering was hanging around and making its presence known. Yeah, bitch! I was in your head to give your otherwise-meaningless existence a little taste of what _real _pain is like! And don't you forget it.

People sometimes describe truly bad headaches as things in which they feel as if their heads are about to explode. For Heather, it was scarier than that. It actually was like something inside of her head causing her pain and trying to _get out. _Having learned to use her abilities after the incidents around the death of her father, the abilities also came with a negative side-effect. Sure, Heather can summon unseen servants to bust some heads and kick ass, among other thing. Yet doing so comes at cost…

Everything has some kind of cost in this world—and this doesn't mean the kind of costs counted in dollars, euros, pounds, rubles, shekels, or any monetary derivation thereof. That'd be great, wouldn't it, if Heather could just hand off the costs of using her abilities to some over-dressed joker in some corporate office? Heather has loads of money and was crazy-rich. But not even whole planets full of money could stop what was going on in the skull-enclosed space between her ears sometimes.

The girl gave a loud sniff, not from tears or crying, but because something was dribbling. Dabbing a wrist under her nose, the girl looked down at the resulting fluid. If it was clear and just your run-of-the-mill runny little schnozz, then the girl would be good to go. If not, it was time for the nosebleed treatment.

Too bad, so sad, it wasn't clear. In fact, the dabble of blood on the back of her pale wrist was very dark and almost black. _Didn't think a white girl like me could have something this black inside, _thought Heather and getting slowly to her feet and pinching her nose.

Yes, the nosebleed treatment is a _go_. Nothing beats sitting by the potty with tissues all bundled up under one's leaking nostril-faucets while salty stuff dribbled down one's throat! And _what a joy _it is when one has to _swallow _when the last thickest clot finally gets done.

Heather used the bathroom attached to her bedroom for the before-described business. Bathroom light on, toilet seat up, toilet paper unfurled (the soft kind, which was great for bleeds not of the tampon-requiring sort), her butt on the edge of the tub, this was going to be it for a while. Now the girl had nothing _but _time to think about what the Hell happened out there.

It was just too easy. Something freaky and impossible decided to make its presence known outside of this-here apartment building. Not only that, it was being too loud about doing that too. _I'm a callin' yew out, Heather Mason!_

Whatever. That thing was a monster. And just like the incidents around the death of her father, Heather had to kill it. Killing things too freaky to exist in this world, it wouldn't be the first time…

The girl wanted so damned much to put that sort of craziness behind her. After all, that sort of craziness got her dad killed. Now the girl was living her life (punctuated with occasional interviews), and that was supposed to be it. Nope, nope, nope-a-roonie! That's _not _it. That creature came out of _nowhere_ and decided to make trouble which was promptly dealt with.

Which, in turn, left Heather with the after-effects of using abilities which probably weren't meant to be used by anyone or anything wearing a human appearance. So Heather might only be _part _human, eh? Which part isn't (wink-wink, nudge-nudge)?

Human enough, and that was what mattered. Heather could get naked right here and now, and nobody would be able to tell the difference. It wasn't like the girl had friggin' wings growing out of her skinny back or _horns _sprouting out of her forehead. And no, her sneakers did not cover a set of flippers or cloven hooves or whatever. Heather saw herself naked twice every day when showering. And compared to the…uh, personal company brought over every so often, there wasn't much in the way of anatomical difference other than height, body measurements, eye and hair color. No doctor ever had to open her up for any kind of surgery, so there was no official statement about her insides either. Since Heather never went to see a doctor and hating hospitals to begin with, it was all good.

That was the outside. There are at least two sides to a person—the outside and the inside. Beyond the skin, beyond shape of the body, what lies beneath?

Heather did her best to completely ignore the color of the blood in the toilet—blood which was an absolutely dark color that one would more associate with chemicals of some kind rather than the vital life-fluid which is supposed to flow through the body of a _homo sapiens_. No, it wasn't even venous blood. Too bad there wasn't a doctor in the house. Anyone certified to be a member of the medical-science community would no doubt have surrendered some part of their anatomy to have a look at that stuff. Then they'd probably have her taken away somewhere like some kind of lab animal. Which was all the more reason to avoid hospital.

_Human enough, _thought Heather again, pinching her nose with fingers of right hand while using her left to dump one wad of tissue for the other. Being human is what a human being is supposed to do. In a world of over six billion people who called themselves that, there had to be at least a little wriggle room for her. There ought not be room in this world for the sorts of thing which came for her.

Unfortunately, that thing would not be the last. Heather just knew the thing which appeared in the parking lot was just the first. _Somebody _knew about her and sent that thing as a living, breathing, message that was ugly as sin and had an attitude to match. _And _Heather had to deal with an interview tomorrow. Oh yes, what a great week this was turning out to be.

…

Far away from the apartment building, far away from the little no-name city in which the apartment was situated, the huge penitentiary was still standing there with its upper reaches against the sky, taller than the trees of the forest—looking like some kind of modern-day castle made out of concrete slabs.

A person with ordinary hearing could not hear the laughter from outside the thick-slab concrete walls of the gigantic place. One could not hear the chortling and belly-deep sounds of joy from one prisoner in particular. It was the odd prisoner.

He set out to do a little something. And since it was done, he had crawled back into his jail cell. That whole incident with the giant-headed surprise in the parking? Maybe he had something to do with it. Even if he didn't dig the creature out from whatever deranged planet or dimension it came from, maybe he was able to make it appear. But _how _did he do it? Well… That'll just be left up to the imagination for now.

Now he would start doing _more _things. The expression _need to get out more often _wouldn't usually apply to prisoners—let alone the odd prisoner—but it was a start_. _It only made him laugh some more, along with considerations of what kinds of laughter there would be later on.


	3. Chapter 3

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 3

…

1.

…

Heather rode a nearly empty bus to the mall, a bus because it was actually faster than calling for cab. Actually, it was faster than calling a cab…then waiting for the cab dispatcher to have a cab ready…and then waiting for the damned thing to show up…to finally get to where one was going. In all the movies and television shows with cities, all a character has to do is wave a hand on the sidewalk to get one of those yellow things to pull over—inevitably driven by somebody with a New-York or Boston accent…even if they're not in New York or Boston. _Where ya headed, toots? _Nuh-uh. Not in _this _no-name city. There was just one tiny little cab company in this whole no-name city. The one time Heather _did _call a cab from her place took centuries to show up. And even then, the fat lady driving the thing kept calling her _honey _and _sweetie, _like Heather was somebody's child. (Could've been worse. It could've been a fat man who had his eyeballs all over her before letting her into the cab. That's why the lady only got two bucks for a tip instead of the local customary five percent, hah-hah.)

Or maybe it wasn't that cab driver's fault for treating Heather like a child. Nobody sees a grown-up in somebody the size of someone's kid sister…_like Heather_.

Whatever. Heather still thought the cab driver to be a jerk, treating her like a kid. It'd probably be great fun to become nine feet tall and built like a comic-book super-heroine. Then Heather could go around calling everyone else _kid _or _shorty_.

About the bus-ride to the mall, this jaunt wasn't for kicks and giggles. The interview was slated to take place there, in a bookstore where Heather worked for a little bit. That was back when Dad was alive and telling her to earn her own spending money. Said Dad, _You are becoming an adult, and I expect you to learn some responsibility. _Dad would maybe frown on the thought of Heather lounging around and not doing much nowadays, though—just mooching off book royalties.

Heather left her job as soon as enough money came in because one of her co-workers was a real bitch who wouldn't let up on the short jokes for one thing and the lesbo jokes for another. Heather didn't tell her anything about her own personal life. It was just that word gets around… That's okay. Heather got back at the bitch in a big way before quitting. After that, the obnoxious co-worker was said to be seeing a psychiatrist. Let it be known, despite her physical stature, Heather Mason is not someone to be trifled with.

…

The bus stopped right at the side entrance of the huge place. Inside, the marble-tiled luxury of the mall, not a lot of hustling and bustling was going on at this time of day. It was still before noon, and most everybody in town was still working. For the really heavy crowds, a person would have to wait until around Thursday evenings and into the rest of the weekend—which was ironic since the mall closed early on weekends. (One of these days, the idiots in business suits would figure out that if they ran their malls late on _weekends, _they would have more customers and make more money. That would be the smart thing to do, but the people in business suits are not hired based on brain power. It's not _what _you know but _who _you know.)

Right now, having almost nobody in the mall was convenient because Heather didn't have to weave her way between clusters and hoards of people bigger than her. An all-too-familiar escalator ride up to the second floor, and the bookstore was somewhere along the right side.

The reporter would probably already be there even if the interview wasn't supposed to happen for another half-hour. But Heather wanted this interview over with. As one really important author once wrote, _Soonest begun is soonest done. _Or was it, _Soonest done is soonest begun? _

One of those things. Heather pulled opened one of the familiar glass-and-steel doors to let herself in. Doors keep the noise out, good for customers who like things quiet. Unlike most places of the mall, the bookstore has doors because it kept the noise out, serving those customers who like things being really quiet. This way, customers can browse the bookstore aisles, buy what they want, and sit down with something to read in peace—maybe with an espresso or some other kind of ridiculously overpriced coffee-like product. (Hey, just because Heather has freakin' shiploads of cash in the bank doesn't give her an excuse to be a dumb idiot about spending habits. A person would take one look at her trailer-trash outfit of tight jeans-and-tank top to see that…complete with her dollar-store sneakers.)

The young woman working behind the counter recognized Heather (the writer's daughter) and nodded towards the tables out near the back of the store. You know, the back—where people sit down to read while drinking that overpriced coffee—spending ten bucks on something that they can probably drink in ten minutes. They could also probably buy nine pounds of the mix for whatever price they paid for just one serving. (Suckers…)

Lo and behold, that was _exactly _what the reporter-lady was doing right now—sitting at the back, drinking an overpriced cup of something expensive while reading a book. And Heather just knew it was the reporter—not because of some mystical powers but because the pretty lady was just too professionally dressed to be a mall-walker. Even business-office types loosened collars and what-not before dropping by here on their lunch-breaks or after work in general. Women replace their shoes with sneakers, and men ditch their ties.

No, that nice-looking lady looked dressed to impress—a pair of mute-red slacks with a matching dark-red blouse. It offset the sunny brightness of her short-cut straight blonde hair. Maybe the lady had too much makeup on a face that was probably very pretty without it. A slender purse-strap looped her left shoulder. The seat opposite the reporter-lady was available—as were all of seats.

_Showtime, _thought Heather in pulling out a seat and sitting herself down. "You wanted the interview, right?"

_Oh! _The reporter-lady's startled blue eyes looked surprised up from her book, her lips still in mid-sip from the overpriced coffee. Her eyes popping open all wide like that, it made her look exactly like one of those plastic dolls. Professional experience kept her from spilling that stuff in the cup. (What the heck was it? It smelled really sweet, and suddenly Heather wanted some. Not bought from here. They must sell the mix somewhere around here, though.)

"Just give me _one _moment." Down went the drink, placed onto the table next to the book, which was closed. Then the reporter-lady reached into that slim purse of hers for a notebook and one of those small tape recorders, those things called _dictation machines _by the professionals. "You're early, Heather."

_On a first-name basis already, huh?_ _That's _Miss _Heather Mason to you, slut. _Heather thought that yet didn't say it. Oh, what _fun _it would be if it _was _said. Wouldn't go over too well with Dad's literary agents, yet they'd probably get over it. What were they going to do? Cut her allowance and ground her for a week? _I hate these interviews. What's keeping me from throwing a total bitch-fit right now and walking away? _Well, just because Heather had to be at this interview didn't mean that there wasn't a little fun to be had. The girl's eyes went to the reporter-lady's small hand-held tape recorder. Party time_…_

The pretty reporter-lady sitting opposite her suddenly seemed to have problems with that small electronic device. Its little red power light winked out. "Hmm. That's not right. Suddenly, this thing isn't working."

"It's the batteries," said Heather matter-of-factly. A not-so-nice kind of smile came to her lips, coming into her voice. "Maybe you should have checked them before showing up to do your job."

"But these batteries were _brand-new_," went the reporter-lady, nevertheless doing that fumble-thing with her purse. "I just…" Delicate fingers dove into the purse once more and came out with a quadruple pack of slim triple-A batteries—taking out two fresh ones. A dictation machine, spare batteries, along with cash enough for overpriced coffee. It made Heather wonder what the heck else was piled into that slim purse. If the reporter-lady had something in that thing which unfolds to make a jumbo-jet complete with flight attendants (pushing carts of damned good coffee), Heather wouldn't be surprised.

Turning over the tiny tape recorder and putting it onto the table, the reporter-lady snapped open the case and quickly removed the allegedly drained batteries, replacing them with fresh ones. The little cassette recorder was working again.

Heh-heh. Working, but not for long… As Heather expected (and planned), the tape recorder stopped working after all of six seconds. Like the glowing eye of a killer robot in that science fiction book, the red light just faded out.

_Systems shutdown, Miss Reporter-Lady, _thought Heather as her smile went even wider. This aspect of the interview was going as planned. And if anyone asked if Heather had anything to do with it, they'd just get a sweet smile and some innocent words. _Well, gosh! I don't know how some reporters just keep having trouble with their electronic stuff whenever they're around me, _was what Heather once told the book-publishing people. _Who knows. Maybe their stuff is jinxed. _

"Two sets of batteries dying at once. This has never happened to me before. I just don't know how or why…!" All flustered and bothered, the reporter-lady put the malfunctioning little tape-recorder back into her slim purse. "Just never mind. We'll do this with pen and paper. That can't go wrong."

"Good idea!" went Heather too cheerfully, thinking about all the kinds of trouble that could be caused with even that. But…no. The reporter-lady was kind of cute in a weekday-morning young secretary sort of way and probably didn't deserve too much trouble. _Okay. I'll behave. But not yet. _"Before we start, though, I want to know your name. Aren't you supposed to introduce yourself or something first?"

This made the reporter lady give pause, going blank-faced for a moment—the kind of face which matches the word, _duh. _"I'm sorry!" The reporter lady quickly put out her right hand above the table. "Alexia Ashfield. _Blue Journal _literary magazine."

Heather clasped hands with the reporter-lady and thought about giving a mighty squeeze, as what one would do on meeting male company. That's what happens when a girl is brought up by a father. That, and Heather is stronger than physical appearances would lead one to believe. "Heather Mason, as you already know."

Introduction done, letting go of each other's hands, the reporter-lady once again readied herself with pen and notepad. "I'm going to start with the usual set of questions. First, when you think of your father's works, what's probably the most important direction his work was going? What do you think he was aiming for?"

_Depends on what kinda weapon he's aiming. _Of course, as with other things, that's not what Heather said out loud. Since the reporter was starting with the usual set of questions, it was time to dig out the standard answers to that sort of question. "I think my dad's work is about good people going against the forces of darkness. If you read all of his works, you will always find at least one person who is trying to do the right thing and win. It doesn't matter how much evil that one person is facing. All it takes is just one person."

The reporter-lady was quickly scribbling down Heather's words even while the words were still coming. A person would wonder if such words were even readable afterward unless they came to know of what the secretary-types call _shorthand. _If the art of writing was revised by someone who had gone maybe a few decades without sleep and having consumed a few hundred gallons of coffee, shorthand would be the result. Another result would be a trip to the emergency room before one's heart just about exploded from having consumed so much caffeine. Or they'd call in the bomb squad.

"Yes…" went the reporter lady, having finished the hyper-caffeinated scribble-writing (_shorthand_). "I've read some of your father's books. In fact, a lot of people throughout the world have. We know that he wrote horror. But allegedly, some people insist that a certain book he wrote almost two decades ago was based on reality. I'm talking about the book about…"

"The one about Silent Hill?" finished Heather. _He-e-e-ere we go… _"Yeah. I'd say it's real enough. It depends on what you think of what _reality _is, though."

For a moment, the reporter-lady's right hand paused in that jittering rapid-fire writing before starting back up again. Then her eyes looked up from the notepad. Pretty eyes. "So, when your father wrote about the fog, the monsters… Of course, he didn't say that they were just monsters. He wrote that they were something about them being delusions brought to life. All of that really happened? People who don't understand would think that it all sounds just a little bit…off the wall?"

Heather thought, _When they hired you, did they do it for your brains or your butt? Because it sounds like you're missing the first one while it looks like you've got a decent version of the second one. _Trying her best to not sound like someone explaining something to a very foolish child, Heather said, "Remember, I said that it depends on what you think reality is. We live in what we think of as being this reality. And in some places of this great big-wide world of ours, reality can get to be pretty thin stuff sometimes."

…

2.

…

Heather left the mall with more than just a satisfied feeling of having shaken the emotional stability of a reporter. (_Bet the lady'll think twice about ghost stories from now on, _went a thought.) The girl's book-supply needed replenishing, and then there were some CDs in the music store from a local group that got a record deal, so some shopping was done. Some paperback books, some music and a bag of sweet-coffee mix, that was enough. It was dark outside by the time the cab got her back to the apartment building in the city. Yeah, that's right—_plenty _of cabs ready to pick people up from the mall in seconds. Maybe that's why they took so damned long to reach her place across town.

_Daisy Villa Apartments _was the name of where Heather lived, having been there with her father for a pretty long time. They named it _Daisy Villa Apartments _even if it wasn't a villa and there were absolutely no daisies in sight. (If there were daisies planted, somebody would probably dig 'em up and sell 'em.) Despite being shady about its name, this place wasn't ghetto, but it wasn't luxury either.

"Here you go," said Heather, grabbing the cloth-bags of mall-bought goods and giving the cab driver a twenty-dollar tip—a fresh bill of that sort unfolded from cash in a jeans-pocket.

"Hey, thanks!" went the female cab driver, a young lady in her mid-twenties. As Heather found out in the long cab-ride home, the cab driver was a college student earning some cash on the side to pay for expenses like, oh say…_food _and _medical care_. Heather had too much money and the grad student almost never has any. So why not the big tip?

Standing on the sidewalk outside the cab, cloth bags in her hands, Heather closed the cab door with a bump of her hips. "See you around!" was her shout to the driver.

Illuminated by the taxi-cab's interior lights, the cab driver gave a big smile and little wave of her fingertips before driving off into the city night.

Now was time to go in and put the CDs in the player—maybe play it really loud while in the shower. It was time to hear how good that local band was, if they were able to get a record deal from a big-name corporate outfit.

…

Inside the apartment building, past the thick wooden doors of the front entrance, Heather walked the tiled floor of the hall. This was the ground floor, yet the girl always thought it looked like a hallway that belonged in a basement—the floor looking worn and pitted as if heavy machinery was being run over it, the ceiling with its exposed pipe-work and snaking electrical cables, long florescent light-fixtures for illumination. To the sides were the doors of apartments belonging to neighbors who knew her more than her knowing them.

Heather did know some neighbors pretty well. There was this one lady who had this really cute little kid, that little munchkin who was always putting her fingers in her mouth and was always very eager with hugs. The kid knew her as _Miss Heather. _Heather had once loaned the lady a few hundred dollars to get through a tight time, and the lady was really grateful.

Then there was that elderly couple, always dressing up exactly how you'd expect the elderly to dress—wearing big sweaters and loose pants with comfortable shoes all year round because getting old means feeling chilly. They once asked Heather over for tea, though tea is more of an English custom than an American one. Coffee is bad for their blood pressure, so tea it was. It was a real wonder how that couple could stayed married for fifty years when most folks these days can't even stay married for five. Then again, it was also a wonder why they hadn't _both _retired from their jobs—the wife working at a dry-cleaning place for rich people's clothing stores, the husband working at the supermarket.

Other people lived around here, just not a lot of them that Heather knew personally—like those neighbors who all piled out to see the leftovers of that _creature _in the parking lot the other day, more like some of them enjoying the spectacle of a girl in tight clothes staggering with a really head-screwing headache. Seeing people messed up is always fun. Anyway, at the least, Heather knew all of the faces of the people who were around here. So why was it that the guy standing to the right of her apartment door so damnably unfamiliar?

The girl stopped in mid-stride just long enough to consider the stranger's physical appearance to maybe tell the police or the detectives later. It sometimes had to be detectives on call because the police weren't always around, because there just weren't enough police…because the city couldn't afford much in the way of law enforcement. (Yup, everybody thank the politicians for two decades of tax cuts!)

_Stalker _was what Heather was thinking. The stranger over there wasn't carrying a big knife as far as Heather could tell (and it always seems to be a _knife _when it comes to stalkers), nor was the guy (_stalker_) wearing some kind of mask. Instead, he was a skinny sort of guy dressed in white-buttoned shirt and black slacks—dark shoes on his feet. His full head of dark hair was around a lean-jawed face that was shaded with facial hair. He was one of those guys who probably shaved every morning but just ended up with leftovers anyway, the face of a guy who couldn't be over the age of twenty. College-aged, just like the female cab driver. But the stranger definitely dressed like someone not at college classes at the moment, looking more like a business intern or something.

No matter how nicely he was dressed, he was probably still a _stalker _and a _pervert_, which were still closely related species of human freaks. _Some pervie-stalker has some magazine pictures of me and can't get me out of his mind. _Heather knew that not all men were pervs—just lots of them.

The young-man-who-could-be-a-stalker walked on over to where Heather was standing with her cloth bags of stuff from the mall. Heather wasn't scared. It was more like disgust which was being felt. If the guy tried to get physical, Heather had some _friends _of an invisible sort who would…_persuade _the stranger away. And since dealing with that thing in the parking lot yesterday afternoon, Heather's buddies were readily on call. _Who ya gonna call, _went a line from a classic movie's theme song.

"Heather," went the guy. "Got a second?" Wow, does _everyone _call the girl by her first name nowadays?

"Do I have a second? Sure I do," went Heather, putting down her cloth-bags of purchases and crossing lean arms. "I've got lots of seconds. Minutes and hours too. It's just that none of them are for strange guys who show up at my door _at night._ So if you don't get the Hell away from my door and out of my physical sight in about nine of those seconds, you're really gonna regret it." A smile. "Maybe regret it with your life…"

The young man nodded. "My life, huh? Alright, I'll leave you alone. But I must tell you something before I go… Something is happening again. Something is happening, and there is going to be more trouble. And we need your help to stop it. My name is Mel. Mel Horowitz. Just so you remember. Something is happening…"

"Something is happening, huh?" went Heather, uncrossing her arms. "Like… _No duh! _When _isn't _something happening!" Suddenly her voice kicked up a few notches. "That big-headed thing in the parking lot, what was that supposed to be! No, don't tell me. It was a monster from somewhere else, right? Don't tell me _where _because I know all about _monsters _and _other worlds _and all that crazy stuff." This was followed by an angry _stomp _of her right foot and a shout from her mouth. "_Why does this always have to happen to me!_"Her hazel eyes narrowed into angry slits. "Did _you _send that thing?" The apartment-hall lights flickered. Something invisible made an angry sound. "_Did you?_"

The young man looked genuinely sympathetic, not at all frightened by the odd flickering of the lights, or the sound of something unseen. "I'm sorry that you're getting upset. But I've got some good news. You'll be okay for tonight and probably tomorrow. It wasn't me. And I think you have a way of knowing if I did have something to do with it."

Heather did have a way of knowing that. The girl can't read people's minds to pick up on thoughts. Yet it wasn't hard for her to reach out and sort of…_sense _a person's intentions. The girl didn't do it too often because it sometimes led to little head-pains later—not as much as the misery brought about from summoning unseen things to do her bidding, but a pain in the head nevertheless. Again, her abilities have costs.

Being aware of potential head-pains to come from doing this, Heather nevertheless tried to sense if the guy was bad and if he had something to do with that problem. He didn't. In fact, Heather sensed the ambiance of someone who was trying to be good even with some bad aspects. There was also something else about him that was really hard to pick up, too. Something wasn't right about him. Then again, there were a lot of things not right about Heather, either.

Then there was how the guy knew how Heather could do things with her mind in the first place, like sensing intentions. "Wait a second… How do you know about me?" was the girl's question. Of course, a _stalker _would know everything about someone, everything from shoe size to real hair color. In Heather's case, knowing her real hair color would be quite an accomplishment of investigative antics—the girl having been a dyed blonde for so long. Don't make blonde jokes either because her real hair color is dark, maybe Goth dark.

"If I didn't know anything, I would not be terribly useful," said Mel. "In fact, if you let me, I can be one of the biggest helps you could have around. You'll probably need help too if you're going to help stop what's happening."

"Whatever," went Heather. "You've said what you had to say. I'm not gonna say _yes _to what you're talking about because it's just too much thrown at me at once. I'm gonna have dinner, listen to some music and go to sleep. Is that okay?" _And since you look to be a young 'un yourself, isn't it past your bedtime?_

"Okay," went Mel. "I'll be going. Just please remember what I said." He then turned to walk away and went around a right-side corner of this hall, leading to the rear entrance of this apartment building.

Heather didn't bother to listen for the familiar _click-clop _sound of the thick metal doors being opened which meant that a person left the building through the back. The girl just picked up her newly bought stuff and carried it over to her apartment door, got out her house-key and opened up. One had best believe that the girl triple-locked her door from there—the spring-bolt lock on the door handle, the dead-bolt lock which had to be turned, and even the sliding chain. Heather didn't want any more visits from weirdoes today, tonight, or maybe ever again. There would be more weirdoes, though.


	4. Chapter 4

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

"Red"

Vocals and Lyrics by Natalie Walker

Chapter 4

…

1.

…

Was it really too much of a surprise that Heather had a headache? No… No, it wasn't. Not at this point in the game. The girl fully expected to have some kind of head pain, doing those strange things that normal people can't. Expecting a headache, and her expectations were well met, too… Oh yeah. Right about now, it felt like a bunch of evil little creatures were inside of her head and applying pickaxes to her skull—trying to _get out. _The girl gently laid herself down on the sofa in the living room, lying down carefully as if her head would crack open if moved too quickly. (Don't let those little bastards out.) Just laying herself down gently even while _it felt as being drop-kicked by pain. _

Heather felt a little better… Everything was soft and comfortable. Beneath her lean body, the cushions of the sofa were just so soft welcoming. The only light in here was from the lamp by the door, light filtered through a yellow lampshade—illuminating the inside of this night-time apartment in a low glow.

Well okay, that wasn't the scientific truth. Heather knew from something read a while back that a human brain doesn't feel pain directly. In fact, Heather knew a lot about headaches and mental illnesses problems from personal reading. When a girl has head-problems that medical science can't rightly deal with, taking interest in head-issues becomes a hobby—much in the same way that a cancer patient will take extensive interest in the tumor-killing research. And from her reading, the girl knew that headaches don't come from just a brain being damaged. A headache could be from physical trouble, like not drinking enough fluids like _water. _A headache can also be from some kind of mental problem. Physical or psychological, sources of head-pain can be dealt with by chemical means.

None of those problems could be dealt with by resting on her skinny ass and having a staring contest with the ceiling. And guess what? A ceiling doesn't have to worry about its eyes drying up, so that makes a staring contest with the ceiling… Let's all say it together, kids. _It's pointless._ Pointless, like trying to drown fish or give first-aid to a decapitated corpse.

The girl sighed, closed her eyes and sat up. _Up and at 'em._ That feeling of little creatures in her head got a little worse but not too much worse. Standing and swaying a little on her own too sneakers-clad feet, the girl was able to get a move-on.

Left hand to a side of her head, Heather eventually made it to the kitchen and began bending over to put her mouth to the faucet…and stopped when her headache powered up a notch. Tipping her head was a _big _no-no. So, keeping her head upright, Heather bent down and _carefully _got a clean glass out of the dishwasher and turned on the faucet. Yes, it was time to get a glassful of the best stuff there is for dealing with dehydration. It's called water. Just open the tap, and the stuff just comes gushing out.

The girl must have downed the entire glassful faster than a boozehound can tackle a shot of bourbon. Yeah… Water can be good stuff. And since there must be thousands of gallons available coming right out of the faucet, Heather had herself another glass. This was followed by yet another before deciding to call it quits. It was best to leave at least a little room for dinner.

Her purchases were still by the sofa—the music, the books, and the sweetened coffee. Feeling better but still with a lingering ache behind her forehead, Heather set to putting the items in their right places. Like, the music discs were ground up in the blender and put in the coffee maker, and the coffee mix was poured into her CD player.

Just kidding. The sweet smell of flavored coffee mix filled the kitchenette and the rest of the apartment while music came from the CD player. Heather went to her bedroom, got naked and just left all her clothes on the floor—going into the attached bathroom to have herself an incredibly lazy and time-consuming shower.

An ungodly amount of time later, Heather had dried off and put on a pair of cut-off jeans shorts and another one of her rather close-fitting tank-tops. Her shorts were cut so short that they gave the impression that the girl looked like someone who was paid by the hour for some intimate company. Heather wouldn't dare to wear them in public, but they were just fine for wearing at home. Nor would the girl wear her bunny slippers in public.

Scandalous shorts, tight tank top and Red-Robby bunny slippers on, now Heather was properly attired for the evening. First stop was the kitchenette for the coffee. The music was still playing because CDs don't have to be rewound. Dinner went into the microwave oven and would be ready soon enough. Meanwhile, the coffee would be just fine to sip on for the whole nine minutes until the food was done.

Heather opened her newly purchased novel and began reading—a really big, nice comfy book written by somebody from England. Her dad actually met the author of this book a few times. Big surprise, her dad met lots of other authors. Her dad met the guy, so the girl figured one of that English guy's books was worth giving a whirl.

What a whirl it was, too. From the start, the book was about some small conspiracy of rich people trying to stop all magicians in the modern-day world… Meanwhile, the CD player switched to another tune. Went the lyrics of the song…

_Red has taken us over_

_Reach in and steal whatever we can _

_So this is the feeling of power!_

_Who can we break so stay at the top?_

_Hearts of stone will always be shattered_

_Tu-u-urns around!_

_Eyes of greed will always go blindly_

_Tu-u-urns around!_

_Feel the blood trickle down your back_

_You turn around _

…_and they're daring you to react_

_So is this the feeling of power!_

_Who can we break to stay at the top…?_

Heather was of coursed doing the sensible thing by ignoring the book and listening to the lyrics. Kidding again. The girl was more into the reading instead of the music's lyrics. Maybe later would come her listening to the music itself and hearing the lyrics for what they were. Just maybe, possibly, the song could be connected with something in her life sometimes. Except in this case, the lyrics had something to do with a certain someone who started not-too-long ago—in a place far away—to cause her trouble. We shall not discuss that person at this time. The people taking in this tale are smart enough to figure out what it means. Meanwhile, we shall instead keep our mind's eye focused on the girl in her apartment for now.

Eventually, it was bed-time. Hers was around midnight, what they used to call the _witching hour _a really long time ago. The girl sometimes stayed up until the wee hours of the morning if captivated by a kick-ass novel or some really nice company of a bedroom sort. (We shall not consider any carnal commentary regarding the ability of female-to-female liaisons able to last entire nights. In fact, forget this comment right now.) Not tonight, though. Heather was going to be alone in her bedroom with no company except for whatever the deep darkness of sleep was going to bring her—which was presumably a lot of rest and the oblivion of unconsciousness. Silly girl, a human mind doesn't _really _sleep just because the body does.

…

What came next would make about as much sense as a leprechaun running a lemonade stand. That was wrong in all kinds of ways, too. For one thing, everybody knows that leprechauns don't sell lemonade to earn their gold. They shine shoes. That's where their name comes from—a long-lost set of Irish words that mean some dude always working on single shoes. If leprechauns sold lemonade, then they'd be given the ancient Irish name for lemonade-stand salesman. Or maybe, leprechauns don't _really _exist—not in this reality. Again, it all…_depends on what one calls reality._

_It was dark in her bedroom. Even the city streetlamps outside did not shine through her bedroom curtains. Heather was still able to see everything somehow. No light but…_still being able to see, go figure that one out. Also try to figure out how there was somehow a door in her bedroom that just wasn't there before. Her bedroom is just supposed to have two doors. One of them past the foot of her bed leads to the attached bathroom with a bathtub and shower stall. The second door was on the other side of the bedroom, left of her drawing desk and sitting stool. Now this _third _door, it was plunked into the wall to the right of Heather's desk. Actually, Heather spent more time using the drawing desk to listening to music and reading crazy stuff instead of drawing, not having done too much in the way of visual artistry since Dad died. What do you call a drawing desk if it's not used for drawing anymore?

On that same note, what do you call a door that doesn't seem like it actually goes anywhere? One door leads to the bathroom. The other door leads into the living room of the apartment. Why would there be _two _doors leading to the same place? It wasn't like Heather had two-way crowds flooding in and out of her bedroom. Except… Heather had the idea that the door wasn't just for stop-and-go pedestrian traffic going in and out of this place in her residence.

So where _did _the door go? Screw it. There's no use beating around the bush. Heather opened that sucker up. Beyond the door was straight-up darkness that was darker than what dark was supposed to be.

The rest of her bedroom was dark with her still able to somewhat see everything in it, okay. But the space beyond this door was something of a different color altogether. It seemed as if the space beyond the open door was a darkness that was darker than the universe.

_Looks like fun, _thought Heather, letting herself go into that darkness. It closed over her, taking her…somewhere else. No going back now, the only way out was through.

…

It felt like a long hallway that seemed incredibly ancient despite its materials. The floors and ceiling were made of reddish metal plates interspaced with some industrial grating while the long walls were also of metal—made of slightly disjointed metal bricks that also had a definite rouge-like tinge to them. Somewhere outside this hall was a distant howling of wind blowing, easily imagined to the wind howling through a dark void. One of the doors on the right opened up.

Heather let herself go in without even so much as a _hello. _In some places, one can get shot for walking into a room without announcing one's presence. That didn't seem like the real danger here, though. The door closed behind her, leaving her in this place.

…

Dimly lit by sunset-colored light glowing through the window, this place had a very similar setup to most every apartment in the building Heather lived in. Of course, not everyone has the same furniture arranged the very-same way. That would just be too weird. Maybe not as weird as a mystical being selling glasses of juice made from murdered lemons, but it would still be weird.

The similarities were all in place. This apartment had a main living space that one entered from the hall. Going a bit further in would bring one into view of a kitchenette that was partitioned off by a chest-high counter—at least chest-high to Heather. Unlike the girl's apartment, this one didn't have a set of sliding glass doors to give a view of the outside. There was just a wall. Also, whoever existed here had two chairs by the window—the only source of light in here at the moment, the wooden chairs seated in the brightest of the glow that came through the curtains.

Someone walked out of the shadows and sat in one of the chairs—sitting in the one on the right. "You are here for a reason," he said. "Let's get this road on the show."

"Backwards, got it. You've…" said Heather, stopping herself from saying things in the wrong order. This place had her talking funny for some reason.

Whatever. The girl stepped on over to the left-side chair by the window, sitting herself down with knees together and hands in her lap. Heather noticed that her outfit now consisted of jeans-pants along with another tank top—not that there was any memory of having changed clothes. This too was accepted. Also accepted was how the guy sitting across from Heather was more familiar than one would have liked.

Said Heather, "Hey…! You're that guy! Horowitz, is it? Mel Horowitz? Funny name for a guy." Her attention wandered before a response could be forthcoming. "This is your place, huh? I thought you came from somewhere else pretty far off. But this looks like it's pretty close to home." _And why am I asking about this guy's apartment?_

"It is far away, but it is not in the way that some would think," said Mel, sounding serious. "Something is happening. The people in your apartment are in very serious danger. You are strong. However, you will need help."

"_Something is happening, _huh? Didn't you say that already, somewhere else?" asked Heather. "Look, whatever trouble there is, all I have to do is keep busting some heads and make it go away." Heather left out mention of how that would be done—not mentioning her abilities. The guy already seemed to know about that. And if he did know, why would he think that Heather would need any sort of assistance?

_Thump-thump! _Something pounded from beyond the wall behind Mel. And did something moan? Bitching and moaning is what some people would call those sounds. Yet neither the _bitching _nor the _moaning _parts of the sound seem as if they came from human mouths. Maybe some of those things beyond the walls of this apartment were once human. Or maybe, they never were.

"They gave me this map for you to follow," said Mel. Holding out his right hand, the golden glow of sunlight from the apartment window revealed the folded shape of something. "It is very important that you follow it to get what you will need."

Heather stared at the folded shape of the thing as if it had the cooties, for good reason too. It looked like the map was made out of gauzy, blood-soaked cloth that was frayed at the edges and maybe with something crusty on it—as if the thing was made out of a very large used bandage. Heather just stared. _Like, no way am I touching that thing. _

Wouldn't you know it… Soon as Heather thought that denial, the pounding and noises—the bitching and moaning—started back up again from beyond the walls, floor, and ceiling. Somebody made of softer stuff would have looked around all scared and what-not. Heather really wasn't scared. Nah, that noise just got on her damned nerves.

_Alright, already! _The girl quickly took the nasty and disgusting map-thing—which felt just as nasty and disgusting as it appeared. _Okay, I've got your nasty map, which feels like it's been dipped in stuff found on an autopsy table. Now what?_

Mel's right arm slumped after giving the map. So did the rest of the guy. He nodded and stared out of the window and into that sunset glare of a dying day. "I'm glad you're giving me the chance to leave this Hell-hole without feeling like crap."

"What, getting a chance at stalking me makes you feel good?" responded Heather, holding the map low at her right side, pinching the crusty map-cloth between thumb and forefinger. "_Yuck_. If this is from one of your hobbies, it makes me not want to find out what your _other _hobbies are."

"I used to watch horror movies and read scary books," said Mel. _Thump-thump-thump! _He shifted around as so he could address whatever was making the noise. "Alright, I'll shut up. No more small-talk." He returned his gaze to Heather's "You can leave now without them hating me so much. I'll probably catch up with you later. No need for you to stay in this place any longer than you need to be."

Heather gave one more look down at the crusted-over piece of folded cloth before standing up to walk towards the door—crossing the heavily shadowed apartment living-room. Was it not for the dying sunset-light from that one lonely window, this place would seem so dark as to be totally miserable. "So long, then."

"So long, Heather," said Mel. "And by the way, I won't ever call you Alessa, even if some of them want me to do that."

The girl's shrug was the only outward response given to that. Then the door opened by itself—opening into that darkness which was darker than the universe. It was not so much that the girl walked out of the apartment as…_falling into going into somewhere else, into something else. _

…

_Inside the darkness…_was that metal hallway again. This time, one could pick up the thrumming of machinery working overtime from beneath the floor and beyond the walls. Feet didn't touch the floor. Feet, legs, arms, none of that mattered because it was more like a person just cruised along the hall. It was a hallway so awesome that a person doesn't even have to walk through it. This must be how astronauts feel, not having to put up with the crap of having to be weighed down by that stupid stuff called gravity—which can be a bummer most of the time compared to this. Just like, floating. And a person doesn't even have to suck on a bong to feel like this, either. Not that the girl ever did, if anyone asks. That floating…_came to a stop when a door on the left opened to take her into a darkness that sucked her down. _

…

_Heather woke up…_and looked around her bedroom—city-morning sunlight shining through the window and curtains. Up before ten o'clock without having set the alarm, now that's a shocker. What was more of a shocker was how Heather didn't see that alleged third door in her bedroom. Nope, it was just those two doors—the one to the connected bathroom the one leading into the apartment living room. The one leading into the bathroom was wide open, but the one for going into the living room was closed. That meant Heather couldn't have sleep-walked into the apartment hall and imagined it all.

No, the girl knew better. It wasn't all just imagined. Proof of that came in the form of something which had been clutched in her right hand. That something was a map.

The thing felt a bit cool to the touch and looked a little bit worn, but it had that slightly rubberized feel that waterproofed printed materials tend to have. It wasn't nasty at all other than some rust along the edges when unfolded. Someone also marked it with blue ink-pen. Moving to sit cross-legged, the girl unfolded the map—which was still so chilly that it gave her a slight shiver. Another shiver came from the map's title.

_Of course, _thought Heather. Right now, the girl caught between a feeling to chopping the map into tiny little pieces or just leaving it carelessly on the floor. It was a marked map leading to some place in that lost town that wasn't considered a real place anymore—a map to somewhere in Silent Hill.

…

2.

…

Meanwhile, over at the big-huge penitentiary in the woods, someone was about to have a not-so-good day. Well… Not a lot of goodness can come out of a day spent in the big-house anyway—_not _for the inmates (which sounds suspiciously close to the word _primates_), not for the prison guards (known as _corrections officers _to the people who handle paperwork), and probably _not _even good for that big-headed idiot who ran the place (whom everyone referred to by names not mentionable in polite, sober company). Still though, once life reaches a certain low point of mediocrity and boredom, life really doesn't seem like it can get any worse.

That's the thing about reality—seeming to be one thing and sometimes turning out to be something else altogether. A monster reaching from the shadowy place under a kid's bed? Oh, grow up. That's not a monster, only looks like one. That's actually just a pair of pants left on the floor. That rather cute person sitting opposite oneself on a Friday night at the bar might not actually be cute. Beer goggles tend to change perceptions of beauty. And when lots of people think they're voting for a heroic and honest politician, the dude turns out to be another scumbag as viewed by voters in other parts of the country. (Everybody calls politicians assholes, and most of them are assholes judging from what comes out of them. Yet enough people end up voting for the anuses anyway.)

Suckers…. In fact, most everybody is a sucker at some point in life—be it the kid who thinks there's a monster under the bed, the grown up sharing company with someone in bed, or the politicians who don't need beds to screw over the voters. And right now, boys and girls, someone in the prison was about to be screwed. His name was Jimmy Durant, and he didn't deserve it.

…

At the moment, Jimmy Durant was sitting in the top bunk of his cell and reading a paperback book. Jimmy Durant was of average height for this land—five feet, six inches—and still with that lean look by people still in their teens, though he was in his twenties. His last name was French, but people swore he looked Italian—a pale-skinned and dark-haired sort of guy with a lean face that seemed made out of marble. At the moment, he was wearing a blue set of clothes which resembled work-pants and a sort of janitorial shirt—though the shirt had a number on it. Well golly, _almost everyone _has that same kind of uniform—_prisoner's _uniform. And when they were allowed to go to the prison yard, they had to put on florescent-orange jumpers. Some jails in other states had it as so people wore the day-glow getups all the time. But that would get on everyone's damned nerves eventually—leading most of the psychopaths to do what came naturally and start _killing _each other. So the order of the day was subdued clothes, uniforms for everyone.

Jimmy wasn't killing anyone at the moment. He was just chillin', dude. Just reading a book set in the blessedly sad times in Great Depression in America—_Of Mice and Men. _It was about a short smart guy leading around a big not-so-smart guy, both men in the tale scratching out bare survival in a country where the economy went to Hell. _Flick-flicker…_

The lights were flickering earlier today, yet they were fine now. Rumor had it that the odd prisoner had something to do with that. And if one listened to some of the more questionable people around here, it had something to do with the odd prisoner doing some freaky stuff in his prison cell.

Yeah, whatever. Jimmy was just glad to kick back, relax, and do a whole lot of nothing physical for a good long while.

Jimmy wasn't a bad guy. It only _seemed _as if he was a bad guy because one visit to a court-room made it so. But that was a lie. What will be said next is the ultimate truth. No amount of lawyers, no number of tweaked police reports, no lies or liars, none of that need apply.

…

Jimmy Durant was sent to prison because he was involved in a drunk-driving accident with someone driving a very expensive Mercedes-Benz. A single mother was killed as a result of that accident, resulting in second-degree manslaughter charges. Let it be known that Jimmy wasn't the one who was drunk.

Now the guy driving the expensive car, _he _was drunk. How drunk was he? (Yup, here comes that comedian again. You should've seen it coming a mile away…) The guy in the other car was _so-o-o drunk _that his blood type ought to be _B_…for _Budweiser_. Drunk as a skunk, he was. No, it was worse than that. That dude in the Benz was drunk as a skunk in a three-toed funk and hiding in a tree trunk. Hell, his blood-alcohol content ought to have qualified it as a bio-fuel. (Okay-okay, get that comedian off the stage before he really _does _get skinned alive this time.)

Drunk or not, the man driving the expensive car could also afford an expensive team of lawyers to absolutely _slaughter _Jimmy's case. The way those lawyers played it up was that it was _Jimmy_ who was at fault…somehow. Jimmy's car was positioned six centimeters too close to the legal stop-line! That way, when the driver of the Mercedes-Benz impacted off of Jimmy's car, it angled off and flipped over. Tragically, it flipped over and killed a sweet, innocent single mother in a third car—whose daughter was now an _orphan._

How _dare _Jimmy Durant stop at a stop light! How _dare _Jimmy Durant _fail _to heed the _proper _and _legal _regulations pertaining to _every single vehicle on the state roads! _Because Jimmy Durant was six centimeters off the mark, somebody's mother is _dead. _As that cute little girl grows up, the biggest question in her life will be, _Why did that bad man kill my Mommy?_

Jimmy Durant is a mommy-killer! Skin 'em alive. Then dip 'em in hot sauce and feed 'em to the monsters from under the bed.

No, of course we cannot do that—cruel and unusual punishment and all. What _could _be done under state law was thirty years to life…with a chance of parole. (Yes, it has to be a chance of early release because having people locked up and getting free housing, free food and free medical care is expensive. Letting people out for good behavior is a _good _way to make room.)

So be it, announced with a _bang _of the judge's gavel. Thirty-to-life in the big-house and a chance to get out if he behaves himself. Meanwhile, any and all monies earned by Jimmy Durant within the past ten years shall go into paying for the rich man's wrecked Mercedes-Benz. Take _that_, mommy-killer.

…

Jimmy Durant was taking it, alright—taking his third year well enough. Two years, three months and a week so far, but who's counting? During his life _outside _of prison, Jimmy had to work two jobs just to scrape by in life—barely making rent, paying for various forms of insurance, almost never having more than—no kidding—ninety bucks at the end. Never mind if the medical insurance he paid into didn't cover his post-accident medical bills. And never mind if the car insurance company didn't pay for that expensive accident.

Hmm… Now there's something worth pondering. All kinds of people pay all kinds of money every month into insurance companies as so the insurance companies can pay up whenever something goes wrong. Nowadays, though, insurance companies hire up whole teams of lawyers as so they _don't _have to pay up. It's like a perfectly legal pyramid scheme—almost a monstrous one.

Screw the overpriced rent. Screw the insurance companies. Screw the lawyers and executives. In fact, screw everybody on top of the world in the worst ways possible. So long as Jimmy sat here in prison, nobody was getting a damned thing from him. He could just sit here, lounge around and do nothing until whenever… That is, until a prison guard came on over to the bars.

"Jimmy Durant?" went the prison-guard in uniform. "Gather your belongings. We are moving you to a different cell."

"Huh?" It took a little while for Jimmy to process what he was just told. "Oh, okay…" He climbed down off of the top bunk. All he had in terms of belongings were three books. Even so, the books were on loan from the prison library. Also on loan to him were these fancy prisoner duds. He hadn't earned enough privileges to have writing materials or have candy yet, so forget that. What _did _Jimmy have for belongings then? Well, he still owned his own set of lungs, kidneys, a decent heart, a full head of hair… Oh, and he still had his own life. And…that was about it for now.

Outside of the prison cell, one had a notion of just how big this wing of the prison was. Gray concrete walls, dark gray floor, and no prison would be complete without jail-cell bars—which were (surprise) gray as metal. All of those various tones of gray would give a person the suspicious notion that a theme was going on here. Jimmy's cell, soon to be his former cell, was just down here on the first floor. Look up from down here on the ground floor, and one could see walkways to the left and right on the second and third floors. This setup wasn't put in place to give the inmates balcony views from above but rather to give the prison guards views of all the floors from any level. A prison cell here is just a small barred-off space in a much bigger area the size of a three-story warehouse just in this wing. It was a warehouse of sorts, well-stocked with jailbirds all rockin' to the jailhouse rock. Now connect four gigantic warehouses together, and that was what this penitentiary was.

The prison guard nodded to the stairwell across the dark gray floor. Someone more casual and untrained would have indicated something by pointing. Try pointing in this place in the wrong company, and one runs the risk of that hand being grabbed, the pointing finger being broken. The lights flickered.

"We are going to the third tier," said the prison guard. Walk ahead of me. You know the drill." A pause. "Don't make me remind you of what happens if you don't."

Jimmy did walk ahead, well-aware of the prison guard's steps behind him and also suddenly aware of all the other inmates looking from inside of their own cells. He actually had to look to see if other prisoners were in those other cells because they were so quiet. It was _too _damned quiet. The lights flickered again. Normally, everybody sporting the all-too-fashionable prisoner's garb has something equally stylish to say—usually things that are well-seasoned with four-letter references to human bodily wastes and acts involving reproductive organs. That would be, _normally. _Everybody was just…so…quiet—so quiet that those footsteps behind Jimmy were just so audible. Even more loud would be the sound of them taking to the stairs.

Up one flight of stairs, that took a while since Jimmy was not allowed to move at more than a leisurely pace. Something was written in green glowing letters on the stairwell wall—letters that didn't belong in any language from this world. No sudden movements, because that would give the wrong idea about his intentions—the consequences being him disabled by physical blows if indoors or maybe blasted with a shotgun if outdoors. Finally, they came to the third tier of steps.

Out of the stairwell, on the third tier, something hissed past Jimmy's ear. "_Move it, dumb ass!_" yelled the prison guard behind him. "If you don't start walk your lazy self over to _that _prison cell in _three _seconds, I'll have you put in the hole faster than you can say _sleep deprivation!_"

The hole, that is what they call solitary confinement. What they do is, they lock a prisoner up—butt-naked—in a metal box about the size of a very spacious refrigerator—with nothing but an armored slit out of which a person can look and another slit for pumping in somewhat breathable air. Every hour or so, a bright light slams on and a loudspeaker demands that the prisoner stand up and state his name. Now keep that up for a few days. We'll just politely ignore how this is still considered to be within the bounds of civil rights and all because it's not considered _cruel _and _unusual_. Being locked up naked in a metal box that looks like something out of a comic book villain's evil scheme? Well, gosh-golly! There's nothing _unusual _about that at all, let alone anything cruel!

Hells no. Jimmy didn't want to be boxed. The memories of the odd little things which happened to him on the way up to this tier were quickly forgotten. He now moved with deliberate speed to the one jail cell that was dangerously wide open. All prison cells are supposed to be locked up tighter than a virgin wearing a titanium chastity belt. Yet that _one _cell over there was left wide open.

They came to the open prison cell. Jimmy was surprised to see a prisoner in here. He was even more surprised in thinking about the maybe few-thousand regulations or so being broken by leaving a jail cell _unlocked _and _wide _open while a prisoner was still in it. An inmate could just…walk on out.

"Just shut up and get in," said the guard, seeing Jimmy standing there and expecting too many questions. The guard was not at all happy with the setup and could not have done anything about it. But the prison guard had to be not-happy at someone.

Jimmy did what he was told—shutting up and walking in, coming to see the odd prisoner. What a sight he was too.

Like most everyone else around here, the figure was dressed in a prisoner's uniform. And that was the only similarity between the odd prisoner and everyone else. Too many things about the prisoner gave the impression that he wasn't just somebody's garden-variety jailbird—this…_odd prisoner_. Yes, Jimmy was now in the cell of the odd prisoner.

He didn't look dangerous, but one should remember what was said earlier about appearances. The odd prisoner definitely wasn't a muscle-man. Everyone in this penitentiary bulks up for the sake of protection. Big muscles are absolute necessities to fend off all the other inhabitants of this human zoo. And big muscles go with a big attitude to match, too—like maybe a willingness to jab a shank through somebody's spleen. Everybody here is supposed to look and act as if they can do some damage.

Nuh-uh, not _this _guy. The odd prisoner was skinny—a skinny blond-haired man with a beard. His prison uniform shirt went straight down to the shafts of his pant-legs, looking like pipe-stems. His face was just so calm, the effect all the more amplified because of those bright blue eyes. The way he stared was a gentle, blissful one, making him seem like some kind of courtly wise-man or magic-dude from back in the days of kings and knights. Take away that prison-garb, put a robe on him and give him one of those funny-looking pointy hats with stars on him, and the image would be complete… That is, except his face looked more like somebody who was more a stoner than a sorcerer.

Did they smoke weed back in that time of kings and castles? Jimmy wasn't sure. They must've smoked _something, _right? Somebody once told him that Native Americans invented smoking to kill off white people. And that wasn't until the time in which white people were all about killing off Native Americans—which didn't start until long after castles were starting to get useless. (Yeah, castles are just nice big fat targets for cannonballs and dug-in explosives.) If the odd prisoner couldn't be a magician, then he at was least a weed-head or a coke-head…or not.

Jimmy knew weed-heads and ran into the occasional coke-head. He knew the type. He knew all kinds of types back in the city. In fact, his former cell-mate had a lifetime of trying to be multiple types all at the same time. But _this _guy wasn't. Jimmy definitely had the feeling that the _odd prisoner _was worthy of the moniker.

Said the odd prisoner to the prison-guard, "Thank you for fulfilling my request in such a timely manner, Mister Smith." Those eerie blue eyes stared deep into the prison guard's dark ones. "I can understand your anger at having to comply, yet I would suggest that you not test my authority."

A person could see the muscles in the prison guard's jaw bunch up. He clenched his fists too. Indeed, who the _Hell _was supposed to be in charge of this place? Some way, some how, the odd prisoner could ask to have things done whenever the warden came to visit. Guess what? The warden complied. It made no damned sense and went against everything legal or decent. But it still happened.

All kinds of nasty and vicious things remained unsaid as the prison guard _slammed _the jail cell gate shut. A loud buzzer sounded out when the cell was walked. But the prison guard was already walking away at an angry pace.

Said the odd prisoner in that too-calm voice, "I required a worldly witness to my great works. Jimmy Durant, you have been chosen." He smiled. "There is so much to be done. So little time shall pass before it is done. You will see. Even if I removed your eyes, you would still serve the purpose."

Jimmy did not want to be here. The odd prisoner said nothing at all threatening, talking in that soothing voice. As everyone gets told at some time or other, it's always the _quiet ones _that a person has to look out for. There was no telling what was going on in that guy's head. _This _was the odd prisoner. And _this _was Jimmy wanting to be anywhere but here.


	5. Chapter 5

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

"Sweet Smog Children" lyrics and vocal by Jem

"The Shankill Butchers" music and vocals by The Decemberists

Chapter 5

...

1.

...

Sitting back in the passenger-side seat, the unfolded map across her jeans-covered legs, Heather instead stared out at the view ahead—a slightly fog-misted highway ahead, forest-trees left and right. There were no other cars on this highway though the girl did see some worrisome rusted-out abandoned cars along the side. Either those cars were abandoned so long that the moisture of the mist managed to eat through the metallic paint, or the mist had chemicals mixed in with it that could do more than a little damage. Goodness knows where the fog of that lost town _really _comes from.

_And here we are, breathing the stuff like we don't have a care in the world, _thought Heather, looking at the air vent on the car dashboard in front of her. Some troubled thoughts were getting at her…as was her headache. Since Heather was the one paying for this joyride and paying the dude who was doing the driving, it was perfectly okay for her to turn on the radio. The girl would have her music even if the reception was getting staticky, damn it.

A few button presses from her, and there was just one station playing music. One station, that was it. The others were all full of garbled talk-shows and commercials for crap the girl didn't want or need. Anyway, this station was nice enough. Some kind of song was playing through the hissing, a woman backed by both a country and electric guitar…

Come on,

sweet smog children

Come on…

I can't really _talk _to you

I can only sing

Sweet smog children!

I can only _sing _for you

I don't want to _hear _from you

Sweet smog children!

Feels like I want to hear from you

But I don't really want to _hear _from you

Sweet smog children…

Just then, the radio's reception was conquered by a chaotic mess of hissing and squealing sounds. "_Jeez!_" yelled Heather, putting hands to her ears. What was coming out of the speakers brought to mind a kind of electronic holocaust. On top of that, the audible madness increased as if the volume control was being manipulated by remote. Heather gave a look of disgust to the thing and almost broke the button in shutting off the car radio.

Now there was just the sound of the car tires and the hush of air as this vehicle continued zooming along. The girl rubbed her forehead and let out a sigh. "_Sucks…_" was her muttered statement.

"We can turn back any time you want, Miss Mason," said the young man driving this car. He was a dark-haired twentyish sort, meaning that he could easily have passed for being a teenager himself, dressed exactly the way a traditional private detective is supposed to be. Buttoned-down shirt with a tie, pressed slacks and a beige trenchcoat that looked ironed. His pale face was clean-shaven, his short-cut straight dark hair so neatly trimmed and combed back that it looked almost slicked. A clean-cut prep-boy sort of look, he was a contrast to the man who founded the agency for which he worked. "You seem very uncomfortable."

Heather shook her head, the part of her that was starting to throb a little. It was an effort to resist calling the detective a _dork _just to let off some tension. "Whatever." A vague gesture of her right hand to the highway ahead. "Just keep this go-cart going."

It wasn't that the young professional had done anything to offend Heather. In fact, he was usually on good terms with the girl—as were most all the detectives of the Douglas Carter Detective Agency. Yes, the overdressed young man worked for the Douglass Carter Detective Agency. Now judging from that name, it wouldn't any more than three guesses as to who founded it. Douglass Carter, he was an aging private detective who Heather met two years back… Or more exactly, it was the detective who met Heather—getting her involved in a series of events involving that infamous abandoned town…and the events that got her Dad killed in his sleep. The detective had no choice but to help Heather in getting those events resolved.

After that grand adventurous voyage into the Hell-hole known as Silent Hill, people found out that Douglas was very good at locating missing people. After all, a lot of people had gone missing in that town, and a _lot _more people were willing to pay _a lot more money _to find out what happened to them. And just like people interested in Roswell and UFOs, some of them weren't just fronting cash for personal reasons. Some were just a Hell of a lot interested in what was going on in that town. Douglass couldn't handle all the cases himself. So, with more money than time, he started an agency.

Too bad old Doug didn't use any of that income pay for dumping his nicotine habit. The big-bellied big guy had chain-smoked his way into death by cancer. _Coffin nails, _that is what the old-timers call cigarettes. Every time somebody lights up one of those carcinogen-rich suckers, it's one more nail lined up for that long wooden box waiting down at the funeral home.

Heather herself quit smoking—partially because of being under-aged at the time of her habit (busted by the local fuzz more than once), and partially because her father talked her out of it. Dad didn't creep her out of smoking with the usual scare tactics—like that sort of talk about smoking making for blackened mutated lungs, or how the habit causes teeth to become piss-colored and breath smell like the City of Los Angeles at rush-hour. Heather actually thought that the concept of blackened lungs was totally awesome. (Again, something is not right about that girl.)

Nope. That usual line of scare-talk about mutant death-lungs, toxic car-monster breath or urine-teeth didn't come from Heather's father. Instead, Dad told Heather that smoking opened the possibility of _being burned up in bed from falling asleep with a still-lit cigarette_.

Now _that _did the trick. Heather Mason is _not _a big fan of fire…or mirrors, either. Dad knew about Heather's peculiarities and used them to make her quit smoking. Heather quit for good. The only smoking to ever come from her would be from her riding in a car that had gasses coming out of the tailpipe.

Riding to Silent Hill…again in her life—riding in a car being driven by a detective affiliated with the name _Douglas Carter, _with a road ahead obscured by mist, a headache coming on. This was an awful lot like her previous visit to Silent Hill…

Oh yes, time can be like a circle instead of just a straight line the way most people think it is. Instead of just going ahead ever onward into the future, some things in life just come back around again, to come back around again, to come back around again. It was all like the circular path followed by the heavy metal blades of an industrial fan—the big metal blades of fate whirling around to always follow the same revolving path.

All this time, the girl thought herself being _done _with this. But ever since that huge-headed creature showed up close to her home to get its ass kicked, it was back on again. Heather just hoped that whatever was indicated on the map given to her would help put a stop to problems before they really got started.

Said the male detective, "A penny for your thoughts?" Of course, leave it to somebody else to interrupt a line of contemplation.

_A penny for my thoughts? That saying is older than dirt, _thought the girl, giving the detective an odd look. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be nice to be a bitch for the entirety of this car ride. Being bitchy was mildly entertaining, yes. But the guy just didn't deserve it. "It's just that…" started Heather, giving pause as her hazel-green eyes seemed to glaze over, eyes gleaming to reflect brightness from the misted sunlight of the road ahead. (It could've been the light that made her eyes take on that odd cast. Yes, that's surely it. Nothing to do with getting closer to that abandoned town at all.) "Life just keeps getting sucky because stuff like this is happening again. Don't know if Douglass told you this, but before my Dad died, he had to deal with somebody who tried coming after me. Then Dad got killed. I had to deal with it. That part you should know about."

Responded the detective, "Indeed, Mr. Carter told us all about it. You stopped it once with no problem. We were told that you armed with nothing but a pistol and a pocket knife to handle some very dangerous business in two different towns." He glanced at her, still maintaining attention to the road. "Before he passed away, he also told us that you never needed weapons after that to be dangerous."

"And everybody in your agency knows to keep their mouths shut about what I can do," went Heather. "I don't want to end up in some secret government lab somewhere just because some idiots run off at the mouth."

"Understood, Miss Mason," answered the detective. And that was the end of that line of talk. He glimpsed a metal sign on this side of the highway. _Silent Hill—six miles. _"That can't be right," he said. "All road signs leading to town were removed as of January this year."

"Maybe the town disagreed with the governor and stashed a few away for a rainy day. It's funny like that," said Heather. "Not _ha-ha _funny. Just _kinda odd _sort of funny."

Indeed, without giving any reasons they would discuss publicly, the almighty high elected officials of the state government unanimously passed a resolution to remove any and all signs leading to that derelict town. (For politicians to _all _agree on anything nowadays is a minor miracle in and of itself, something maybe like snowballs developing fire immunity and existing in Satan's rather warm back yard.) Unofficially, it seemed as if the state highway patrol was getting tired of people disappearing in a place that's supposed to be off-limits for some reason or other. If people can't find that town, then they can't get lost in it—a lost town where people won't get _lost _any damned more…damn it.

Too bad. Maybe the town had other ideas. Just like how it grew back its protective coat of fog, it also maybe had a way to make road signs grow back too.

They passed another sign. This one was a real winner—one of those big-huge signs on metal struts as so it was placed higher than a house, a sign showing the town border. _Welcome to Silent Hill, _was written in faded letters bigger than small elephants_._

The detective looked annoyed. No way was it even two miles since that last sign, let alone six. Almost as if to mock him, there was yet _another _welcome sign—this one was red letters on gray instead of the highway-guide white-letters-on-green setup. _Welcome to Silent Hill. _"This fails to make sense," he said aloud.

"Like, _hell-o-o-o!_ Were you even _listening?_" went Heather. "We're dealing with _Silent Hill _here. Stuff happens." The girl crossed her arms. "Well… If you didn't believe Douglas, and you're not believing me, then it sorta leaves a person to wonder. What _will_ you believe? I thought they paid detectives to be smart people, too. I dunno… You just can't be all dense and close-minded when dealing with this kind of stuff!"

"Yes, Miss Mason," answered the detective, gripping the steering wheel and eyeing the bright fogginess ahead—almost as if he expected something freaky to go scampering across the road at any minute just to screw with him, just like out of the stories people told about this town.

And maybe, something just did. He nearly stomped on the brakes but didn't because there was nothing ahead to make him do something like that. But he couldn't be sure of what that thing was. Speaking of surety, if the road distances were off according to the signs, then maybe Heather map was…

Heather interrupted. "No, it's still kinda accurate. At least the location. Don't worry about the distances."

The detective accepted this answer for a moment. Then he went wide-eyed upon realizing that he _didn't say anything aloud about the map. _He just thought a comment, and somehow the girl was able to pick up on it. "How did you…?"

Fingers to her forehead, the girl responded, "Something is trying to come back. No… It's like it's already back. Back in the town. The closer we get, the more it's like…_getting _to me."

Said the young detective, "Like a kind of radiation that scientists don't know about yet. The thing about radiation is that some harmful forms of it are undetectable. You can't see it, touch it or smell it. But it affects people all the same. Hmm. Radiation… Would you mind if I tried the radio again?"

Heather sighed. "Go ahead," said the girl. "Knock yourself out." Her headache jumped up a bit, and the noise to come out of the radio would not be welcome. Welcome to Silent Hill? No, it was more like, _Welcome to the noise, bitches…_. Still, saying _no _to the detective was maybe a little bit like telling a curious kid not to play with a magnifying glass.

With a frowning look of studious curiosity, the detective reached over to turn on the radio. Knowing about how things go around here, the girl had an idea of what was going to come out of the radio this close to the lost town. The detective did not. Well, let him find out—make him feel smart because he thought of some connection between radiation and a device that operates on picking up on that kind of thing. _That's why they're called radios, _thought Heather. _Communication through radiation._

Hissing, static-ridden voices out of the radio speakers. If it was bad when Heather tried listening to music before, it was even worse now. _Hsst… _Static washed out most of the voices, and then the static was temporarily replaced with something else.

"_Chorkumbleff!_" yelled a man on the radio. "_The favorite choice of skumplers everywhere! Get yours at the local Huff-Mart. And watch out for our buzzy bee sales, because everyone knows that the bee-e-e-ees buzz the most…!_"

More static, more electronic tomfoolery, that went on for a good long few seconds until the next bit of talk. Given the officious sound of the next man's voice on the radio, it was no doubt a newscaster—albeit someone giving news that sounded completely wrong.

"_If you're hearing this broadcast, it means that you have survived the first nuclear strike. It is too late to seek access to a fallout shelter. Anyone left above-ground throughout all regions of the Beltran Empire are now thoroughly contaminated. All shelters are sealed with tensor fields courtesy of Thunderhorse Corporation and cannot be entered. May the spirit of monarchs bless all left alive in the land._"

_Hsst… _That apocalyptic broadcast was washed out with more static and replaced with…a folk song? With a guitar instrumental sounding like something out of a cowboy's riding song, a male singer was crooning out the lyrics.

They used to be just like me-e-e and you-hoo.

They used to be _swee-ee-eet_ little boys!

Then something went hor-r-ribly askew-w-w.

Now killing…is their only…source of joy!

'Cause every-body-y knows,

…if you don't

…mind your mother's words!

A wicked wind

…will blow-w-w

…the ribbons from your curls!

Everybody moan.

Everybody shake…

Another moment of static played out before the next burst. Some banjo ditty strummed out as a backdrop as an announcer chimed out in his country accent, "_Hoo-wee! The Indiana Creek Association welcomes humes from all around! We done got us some de-e-elicious hussies with big bosoms and big sounds. Ferget yer troubles 'bout the alien invasion and come on over, y'all!_"

And with that, the young detective quickly shut off the radio. He said, "Some of that sounded too realistic… No, half of that has to be jokes. There's no such thing as the Beltran Empire. We're _not _facing a nuclear war. And nobody believes in aliens."

Heather disagreed quite loudly. "There's no such thing as the Indiana Creek Association either, but that doesn't mean it couldn't exist." Turned her head to look out at the fogginess to the right. "At least, not in this world yet."

"Didn't your father write about this sort of thing?" asked the young male detective. "Maybe he was right after all. Some people were thinking that he was losing his mind a little, writing those books about monsters."

Heather suddenly sounded vicious. "And all the dumb idiots think that my Dad was nuts. Thinking that me living with him drove _me _a little loony too, huh? All that writing about monsters and other worlds, they think it's just crazy talk!" The girl gave a loud huff and crossed her arms. Her voice took on a sudden and sarcastic tone. "If you make it back from our little jaunt, you can talk about how you went a little crazy right along with me! And since you're a guy, it'll sure beat another one of theirdamned Heather-is-a-lesbo articles they keep writing. As if nothing else about me is worth writing about." A pause. "We're almost there. We'll have to turn on the radio to hear them coming."

Hear _who _coming? That gave the detective a worried thought as he glimpsed down at the radio panel, seeing Heather turn the thing on. This time, the radio was quiet save for a slightly distant crackle—which made no sense. With no coherent signal, an analog radio will produce white noise, that loud hissing sound which sounds like electrocuted wind or something. If it was one of those new-fangled digital setups only understandable to technical geniuses, one of those _digital _radios, then radio signals too weak to produce signals would simply not be heard at all. But since this car's radio was a setup that let static on whenever there was little to no signal, there should have been static now.

There wasn't any static. No noise came out of the radio. It was as if the radio broadcasting around here was dead, not at all normal. Then again, things around here tend to be on the not-so-normal side at times this close to a certain town… The only otherwise rational explanation for this would be if the DJ at the radio-station was dead and didn't leave anything running. A corpse makes a rotten DJ by the way, heh-heh.

Said Heather, tweaking the car radio to a certain frequency, "You might want to slow down, 'cause it sounds like we might be really close." Now a bit of squealing static mixed with odd noises came through. This was more of that honest-to-goodness audible chaos, no public service announcements from the doomed Beltran Empire or happy-go-lucky commercials for some stuff called _chorkumbleff _(whatever the Hell that was).

When Heather said that they were close, the young detective just didn't know _how _close. This fog was thicker than a milkshake made with sugared lard. Meaning, the fog was so thick that he didn't see what was ahead _until it was too close for a decent stop._ With a prolonged shriek of four tires and a grunt from the young detective, he was doing his best to keep this car from flipping over. Heather screamed.

…

2.

…

The car did stop without having been flipped over or anything—stopped at an entrance tunnel which was quite blocked off. Gentle wisps of fog drifted across. Yellow-and-black plastic _caution _tape—like that police-line crime-scene stuff—fluttered in the breeze, the tape wrapped around road-closed signs that were propped up. Those stand-up signs should have said _tunnel closed, _because that was what had happened—a tunnel completely blocked off with a kind of reddish dirt or something. A rocky mountain to the left and a cliff to the right, that tunnel was the only way into town to reach the area indicated on the map which directed them out here in the first place.

Okay then…! Tunnel's blocked off. Can't get in. So sad, our bad, can't _get _into Silent Hill today. Go home, and go get wasted or something. There'll be _no _dancing with freaks and geeks from that messed-up town today. Can't you see the signs, girl? _We…are…closed!_

Screw that. Heather came to see what there was to see at the location indicated by the map, then be on her merry way. Never mind if the girl wasn't feeling quite so merry at the moment. In fact, the girls was hurting pretty damned badly.

The girl undid her seatbelt and bent over, holding one arm across her chest. Her free hand was on her forehead. The blaring radio blotted out any sounds of pained noises. The girl wasn't moving. "Are you okay?" asked the young detective.

"If someone kicked you in the nuts while you had the worst hangover in human history, would _you _be okay?" sneered Heather.

The young detective opened his mouth, then shut it. Of course, girls need not worry about being kicked in the crotch. Girls can be hurt very badly if struck in a higher part of their anatomy—the part that gets stared at often.

Not wanting to have further conversations about this sort of thing and feeling ready to get things done, Heather reached down to where the map had fallen at her feet in the car. Yes, this was the place. The girl then unlocked the car door on her side—opened it a little with a shove. Screw it. Heather kicked the door the rest of the way open before getting out.

It was more like her _staggering _out, though—stagger-walking over to sit on the hood of the car to sit and look at the blocked-off tunnel about nine car-lengths away from the front bumper. Nope, they weren't getting in that way. _Not even in town, and we're already sucky, _thought Heather—her eyes on the reddish dirt and her mind on considerations of _what the fork _they were supposed to do next_. _

Heather could ask the detective if he had a good set of shovels or something in the car's trunk. Why not? Aren't detective supposed to have shovels for digging up buried bodies or something? They do in the novels. Shovels in hand, they could then spend a good leisurely few weeks digging from here to Hades.

Nah… Another option would be for Heather to do something with those heaping loads of cash in the bank for once and hire up a demolition crew to do the digging for her. Yeah, and watch them all get spooked off by all the horror stories everybody told about what can happen in _that _town. It'd be even worse when they came to find that some of the stories are true. But never-mind that.

Or maybe, Heather could kick the dirt blocking up the tunnel, get pissed off, and spit more cuss-words than ten years' worth of Hollywood movies. It wouldn't be productive. However, it would be a much-needed stress-reliever.

Leaning forward from her seated place atop the car's hood, the girl looked down at the grayed asphalt of the road—cracked in places. _A road to nowhere, _went a thought. While the roads of her life just kept coming back to this screwed-up place in some way, shape or form, this was one road that came to an end for whatever reason.

A _cl-clomp _of sound indicated the driver's side door being opened. Out came the young detective—looking more like a fashion-magazine image of a detective in his neat clothes and beige trenchcoat, his dark eyes peering at the tunnel-blockage.

Our would-be hero walked the short distance from this car to the wall of reddish dirt. He stood close, right up against the blockage, he didn't speak loudly but didn't have to because fog tends to carry sound pretty well. "It's cut off," he said from over there.

"No duh, doofus! _Of course _the tunnel is cut off!" yelled Heather. "When you took the state test for your detective's license, did you have to pass a part called, 'Stating What Everybody Already Knows'? And I'm guessing the whole damn thing was written up by somebody on the police force named Captain Obvious! _Ooh!_" _Whamp_. That was the sound of her banging the bottom of her right fist atop the hood of the car. "Why don't you try saying something _useful _for once?"

"No, that's not what I meant," went on the young detective, not quite reacting to the girl's fiery temper and her mistreating the only working car for probably six miles around. He held his left hand close to the sheered surface of the oddly reddish dirt…which he noticed was definitely _not _native to this geographical area.

Anyone who's ever traveled to various parts of America and actually stayed in those places would notice things like how different kinds of dirt are from different parts of the country. There's that "fine Georgia clay" in the South which was more like _powdered _clay. Over on the East Coast, there's that damp darkish dirt of the industrial landscape. In part of America, the soil tends to be a bit on the heavy yet dry side. Or it's supposed to be. Meanwhile, it was fairly obvious to the detective that the dirt blocking the tunnel was not native to the region because it was not dirt.

On closer inspection, the detective saw that the thick and powdered substance looked more like powdered rust mixed with dried blood—forming some kind of mixture stiff enough to form a too-neat barrier. It was as if the substance was pumped in, dried somehow, and was cut away by artificial means, as if done by workers and machines.

Trouble is, the young detective doubted that any construction company in existence that worked with a gory mixture of blood and rust—especially not by the truckload. (Hey Joey. Mac here. We got us another few hundred tons of blood and rust to work on that tunnel-blockage job. Let's get 'er done!) If somebody had to have done it, and yet nobody actually did it, how the Hell did it get done in the first place? A blaring sound of static interrupted that line of oddball thought.

"Hey!" yelled Heather with both hands cupped around her mouth, trying to be louder than the sound of static coming from the open car doors. Yes, Heather was still sitting atop the trunk. "Get out your pistol! _Something is coming!_"

Had the young detective been a soldier instead of a civilian, he would have done what he was told. Follow commands without question. On top of that, a soldier would be armed with a _rifle_ instead of just some low-powered, short-ranged, no-ammo-count thing known as a _pistol_. Also, being a civilian, the detective needed a good reason to draw his weapon from his shoulder-holster. He would get his reason soon enough—over a dozen reasons, in fact.

To his right, part of the tunnel entrance's concrete had disappeared. The part was exactly circular. What happens when we remove part of something in a circular fashion to leave a void? That's right, we get…_a hole_. Yes. This hole was a good one, looking maybe big enough for a bull to get through—a hole opening into that darkness which was darker than the universe. Now around that hole were some letters and symbols that just weren't there a few minutes ago. Hell, that hole wasn't there a few minutes ago. What the fork kind of language was that, anyway? Some of it looked Latin or some other ancient language. But some of it didn't even look like it was written by human hands, not ancient _anything_. If the far-out writing around the hole could be considered at least interesting, then the little freaks who came _out _of the whole were worth a whole bunch more attention themselves.

Little freaks, that's what they looked like, coming out of that hole—short-little creature-men with gnarled and knobby green skin, heads bigger than soccer balls, their stubby bodies dressed in tunics and tights—outfits complete with hats and curly toed shoes made out dried human skin. Taking in all of these fashion details, one could also notice a peculiar design painted in red on the fronts of the creatures' tunics—a symbol resembling an eye.

They were doing _something, _temporarily ignoring the young humans here. Two teams of the little green-skinned guys were lugging two similar-looking devices. The devices were each about the size of a car engine. Except those things were probably not from anything that had four wheels and ran on gasoline, given how each device had the black-and-yellow circular _radiation _symbol on them, trailing cut-off electrical cables. No, those strange devices looked more like they were ripped out of a rocket ship from a few thousand years into the future—which was a positive thought that maybe humanity wouldn't blow itself up before then. Then again, nobody said they got it from a rocket-ship from this planet's humanity… Where the Hell did those green-skinned goons get those things? They must've jacked them from a space port much in the same way that human thugs will get at a car radio.

Not all of the freaks were heavily concerned with dragging those devices into position. Some of them were armed with makeshift metal clubs that were probably ripped off of the same place which provided those strange engine-devices with the _radiation _symbols on them.

All the while, the young detective standing close to the hole could not believe what the _fork _he was seeing. This must be a joke or something, like those television shows where ridiculous costumed people put on pranks just to catch it on camera. A joke… Everybody alive since the year 1950 has probably heard at least one joke about _little green men _and that sort of thing. Go ahead. Yuck it up in the company of one's buddies. Now to come face-to-face with an actual set of really, _really _ugly bastards—with them rolling over a dozen deep—that is no laughing matter. Or one can keep on laughing…right up until those nasty creatures from some cosmic butt-hole in the time-space continuum ran up close to smash, slash and kill. It might not be a good idea to get smacked with those improvised maces either. Lord knows what the Hell kind of crusty infection was on those things. Of course, infection won't be much of a concern is _one is beaten to death. _Dead people don't care much about little stuff like infection. In fact, dead people don't care about much at all.

The young detective had no desire to end up being dead himself. So he _finally _drew his pistol—a nine-millimeter semi-automatic—and just started shooting when some of them started hobbling in his direction. (About time, dumbass.) It is really hard to miss at such a short distance, even while armed with something so downright inaccurate and piss-poor pathetic as a pistol.

It was some good shooting too, even with it being from a pistol. A few of the short freaks went down with holes going clear through their chests, dark oily fluid bursting out their backs as they fell to the asphalt. Some more of them had new holes blasted into the big heads of theirs—more of that dark ichor bursting out.

_What the…? _The detective thought the stuff coming out of the freaks looked more like some kind of jellied petroleum rather than blood. So he shot those short freaks armed with metal clubs and expected blood to come out_. _Only when stuff other than the red stuff came splattering out of them did he fully realize _that those freaks were not from this world._ He had about thirteen more rounds left at this point, so he kept up his shooting. Ha-ha, the joke's on _you. _

And for whatever reason, even this deep in a completely crazy situation of being life and risking death, it made him think about a movie he saw once. It was a movie about some commandos in a jungle who had to deal with some kind of monster. In that movie, said the muscular leader of the group, _If it bleeds, it can be killed. _Except in that movie, the monster's life-goo was a glowy green instead of the Texas-tea black stuff coming out of these creatures.

It can be killed. These _things _can be killed. They can be killed by shooting them. And the detective just kept shooting until the magazine of ammo ran out—all eighteen rounds. Again, that's a pistol for you—no sort of ammo capacity worth bragging about. And that's with a _decent _pistol's ammo-capacity, too.

Let's see. The detective had a dozen and a half shots in that laughable pea-shooter of his. Now it _was _said that there were over a dozen of those bastards. He was a pretty decent shot, getting head-shots every time—which wasn't too hard given the sizes of their noggins. So, why were there still more?

Remember that hole in the side of the blocked-up tunnel's entrance—the hole which wasn't just an ordinary hole? Some reinforcements started piling out, more of those short green-skinned freaks, coming like roaches out of an abandoned open can of pork-'n'-beans. And all of those turds were just as ugly as the other turds that came before them—nasty little guys dressed in their tunics with that eye-symbol painted on the front, hats and curly toed shoes of human-skin leather.

While the detective made his pistol release the empty magazine and reached into that fancy-pants trenchcoat of his for a reload, those little guys weren't waiting around. They were coming for him. Some of them were hobbling over to Heather, who was getting busy herself.

By now, the girl had climbed atop the car itself to get the best view of things. Her sneakers-covered feet apart, her hands clenched, her calmed eyes looked on the worst of the crowd. The detective had already downed over a dozen of the freaks and made them drop those portable chunks of with the _radiation _symbol on them. Yet this second group was already on the move, maces raised in their hands. They were planning on performing a little police brutality even if they weren't police themselves.

They didn't get the chance. The girl focused her mind a certain way…_and something rippled in the foggy air. _Here we go...

Heavy, clawed footfalls sounded out, pounding on the paved roadway—moving in the direction of the group of creatures moving too slowly from the hole. The clawed footfalls were matched with deep snarls and growls in the air as a Heather's unseen servants ran over to get things done.

In the vernacular of a rock-music fanatic, one could say that the results were _awesome._ A few of the little freaks had their heads struck off, dark oily stuff spurting into the air from neck-stumps. Some more of them had their torsos blasted open with more swipes of invisible claws. Sounds of obliterated flesh were met with deep growls and snarls of a fury that went beyond anything from this plane of existence. And from the looks of the destruction being visited upon those ugly creatures, perhaps human civilization and sanity was better off due to how those unseen servants not being fully manifested into this reality. Just enough of the unseen servants were present to put on one Hell of a show.

Whatever presence sent the little green-skinned dudes to come out of the hole probably decided to call it quits. Pistols may run out of ammo, but Heather's unseen servants and their claws never need reloading. No use throwing good money after bad—or perfectly functioning creatures to get slaughtered. No more freaks came pouring out of the hole.

With no more enemies to slaughter, the unseen servants…_went away_. A person could not see them go. That's because they weren't visible even when they were here. Rather, one just felt something leaving. Ladies and gentlemen, the unseen servants have left the building.

Over by the hole, his pistol hanging from his right hand and the rest of him looking pretty limp, the detective stared at the mess—looking all wide-eyed. The detective looked wide-eyed, that is—not the mess. Actually, the bits of mess that had eyeballs staring with dead stares—the only kind that dead things can give. Not a single one of those green-skinned freaks was left bodily intact—smashed torsos with limbs ripped off, wet slimy body parts from both inside and outside scattered all higgledy-piggledy over the place.

Heather eased herself off of the metal roof of the car and moved to sit on the hood again as her headache was coming on to wreck her sense of well-being. Even from summoning just a short-lived bit of destruction, the girl was going to pay for it. The girl was going to pay big-time, too—payment given for services rendered. Here it comes…

Yes, indeed. _The pain…! _Heather curled up atop the hood of the car and clutched the sides of her head, not fully aware of grasping her own blonde hair and being so loud. Even her own screams sounded far away, her entire body feeling far away as _the pain seemed to destroy her from the inside of her head and everywhere else._ _This pain was everything. _

Quickly holstering his pistol and somehow not slipping on chunks of gore, the detective ran over to where the girl was writhing in internal agony atop the car. He put his hands on the bare skin of her lean shoulders—the skin being very hot to the touch. In fact, the girl's skin was so hot that the detective's hands were _burned _a little.

He saw that his fingertips were reddened. If these were first- or second-degree burns, he couldn't tell right now. He just _touched _the girl's skin and was singed. The girl herself must be hot enough inside to burst into flames.

The young detective tried screaming the girl's name. Trouble was, the girl was doing enough screaming for both of them. And the return of blaring static from the car's radio wasn't helping things—the blaring of static which sounded out when those freaks with human-leather fashion accessories came out of the hole. Except this time, the radio-static wasn't a forewarning of more creatures to come. Something else was happening.

Those ugly bastards didn't show up to put on a song-and-dance routine, after all. Their real purpose was to bring those two devices. Those would be the engine-machines with the _radiation _symbol on them. Those devices…_hummed as they powered up. A loud siren sounded off in the distance somehow, everything rumbled and rippled. Darkness slammed down and closed over this scene. All things within the vicinity were pulled into…somewhere else. That included the girl and the detective… _


	6. Chapter 6

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 6

…

1.

…

_A person could just barely see in this place at first—dim illumination coming from one grimy light fixture that…_weakly glowed from a wall of dark-red metal. There were no electrical cables attached to the light fixture. It didn't run on a battery either. The thing just seemed to glow on its own somehow… No, that's wrong. Maybe it was so radioactive in this machine-room that something in the light fixture gave off visible light in reaction. Screw it if high radioactivity could give humans all the fun and excitement of bleeding guts.

This was a machine-room. One whole wall was dominated by a gigantic engine-looking thing, an engine-machine that was bolted into place—grimy pipes going from the machine to the floor and wall. Instead of cinder-block bricks… What, did someone actually expect normalcy here? Nope, the walls of this place were made of metal blocks used like bricks. The floor was also metal—some kind alloyed plates. And for whatever reason, some of those floor-plates were gone to reveal the metal grating beneath, showing the infinite darkness below. Even if one could not see down there, a person could _hear _what was below—fiery machines churning away in a windy void, the machines that were beneath this place and beyond the walls. As for the ceiling, it was an intricate working of more rusty pipes and grating as if it was the underside of a massive, ancient vehicle—covered with a layer of greasy reddish grime. _Clank-k-k!_

Shocked by that burst of metallic sound, Heather sat up quickly and suddenly—also suddenly aware of a thick nastiness across one side of her face. Wasn't an alarm clock, yet it had the same effect. There was to be _no _sleeping on this job. Then Heather felt the nastiness.

While the girl had lain unconscious and exhausted from usage of her abilities, stuff had dribbled out of her nose and followed gravity to go along one of her cheeks. It dried like that too because an unconscious Heather couldn't wipe her own face…unless sleepwalking. Except, then it would be sleep-_wiping_ or something.

_Totally gross, _thought Heather, sitting there awake and rubbing her right cheek. Thinking to herself, _It's nasty when it's wet, and it's nasty when it dries. It's also the stuff that I've got for blood. _

"You've regained consciousness," said the young detective. He was standing over by the metal exit door.

"And _you _need to stop being such a dork by stating the obvious all the time," said Heather. "Isn't that some kinda mental disorder, saying what everybody already knows?"

"Hmm…" mused the detective aloud, turning back to face the door out of this place. "State-wide fire regulations would normally set it as so the interior of a room with heavy machinery cannot be locked. Locked from the outside, that would be allowed. But locking it from the _inside _and potentially trapping people in goes against the law."

"It's not locked," said Heather. "You're just doing it wrong. Gimme a sec. Gonna get this stuff off of my face before anything else." Still sitting down, the girl then stretched out her legs to pat the pockets of her tight jeans for napkins. Nope, of course there weren't any—just her home key and her state ID with folded pocket-money. It wasn't her period, so there wasn't even _that _kind of napkin. (Heather was at least human enough to have that time of the month on a somewhat regular basis—which counts for something.) And looking around this dimly lit machine-room revealed nothing that could serve for a face-cloth unless the detective had something. Don't detectives carry handkerchiefs or napkins as so they can safely wrap up things that bear fingerprints?

Nah… Instead of asking that guy for anything, Heather girl took off her canvas sneakers, revealing a pair of little white footie-socks. Off came the socks, now serving for wipe-cloths when mixed with a little bit of spit to get her right cheek and nose clean. "Hey, could you let me know me when I've getting it all?"

The young detective sounded a little bit impatient. "Miss Mason, I'm afraid we have a more pressing matter than physical appearances!" He put a hand on the doorknob of what seemed to be the only door out of here. "We seem to have been abducted and taken away to a very strange place. This door's lock is broken. And something other than blood is coming out of your nose. You could have suffered severe head injuries."

Heather switched to her other sock to get what felt to be the last of the dark fluid on her face. And the detective wasn't helping at all. "Like, I _told _you about that door already. You're doing it wrong. Watch." The girl turned her head to stare at the door. The doorknob twisted, and the door itself pulled open a little bit. "There you go."

Stunned, the young detective stood there for half a second before _yanking _the door open. If a doorknob turned, somebody must have turned it. He took that moment to rush out to try and catch who or what opened the door.

There was no one in the hallway beyond—a hallway with metal-brick walls and what looked like more of that armored flooring. _Someone _must have unlocked and opened the door…even if it felt as if the locking mechanism was broken, even if he didn't hear it being unlocked. Apparently, the detective didn't get how it was Heather who used her abilities to open the thing.

_What a noob, _thought Heather, putting her dark-smeared socks back on her feet, then slipping back on the sneakers. It was a little nasty, but Heather couldn't put the socks in her pockets. The pockets of tight jeans don't have high carrying capacities. The alternative would be to leave the socks here. That was the opposite of a good idea because leaving her socks here was the wrong thing to do. Leaving any object of hers behind, particularly something with her own bodily fluids on it, could cause trouble later—much in the same way that leaving a clothing item somewhere was a great way for bloodhounds to track a person. Except, the creatures sent from this place would be more than just dogs.

Speaking of places, the young detective had no idea as to where he was, this place not making sense. He looked forward and backward…or backward and forward. Ahead and behind, the metal hallway and its overhead lights seemed to go on forever in both directions. He saw some other intersections where other metal corridors joined this one. He saw some intersections off in the distance where other hallways joined this one, but those probably went on for quite a distance too. (How big was this place?)

"Why were we taken?" asked the young detective. "And those green-skinned midgets? It makes no sense unless they were kidnapping you for ransom money. You are worth quite a lot, Miss Mason."

"These guys don't care about money," said Heather. "When they find their way into other worlds, it's not money they're after."

Said the young detective, "Are you saying that we were abducted by…_space aliens? _I would have thought that a highly advanced culture would be better equipped for such things. They would use something like ray-guns instead of makeshift weapons of junked tools."

Heather shook her head. "If you want ray-guns and flying saucers, you're talking about the wrong guys. The girl slowed her speech, talking in the deliberately patient and slightly slow way that grown-ups talk to little children who have a hard time understanding. "Listen. We _were _taken. The little guys that got us are not aliens the way you're thinking. And yes, they _did _get us."

"Yes, but by what means?" blustered the young male detective. "I'll admit that we were rendered unconscious by some means involving those strange devices. What were they? How could they work? _What were _those little men? Things like that are not supposed to exist."

Now Heather was becoming huffy. "Will you quit arguing against reality even for a second! Did you ever read, _The Wizard of Oz _books? Okay, now that's a start. We are somewhere else. No tornado whisked us away, but the winkies are directly responsible. The sooner you realize that, the sooner we can start understanding why we're here as so we can get back."

The detective was going to correct Heather and say something about _munchkins, _which were made popular by the movie-version. Compared to the winkies, the munchkins were a bunch of losers. That's because the winkies did the bidding of the evil witch.

_Cli-clack_, came the sound of a door opening_. _"Over here," said a male voice, a voice so distorted by echoes that it seemed unfamiliar—even if it should have been familiar to Heather by now. That's one bad thing about going overboard on metal interior decorating. It all looks as awesome as something out of a death-metal music video, but the acoustics are a real bitch-and-a-half to deal with.

Both Heather and the detective only got a glimpse of a right-side door going shut. Heather kept her eyes on that door—knowing that some doors here opened into places that could be the _wrong _places Some of those places were machine-rooms and other such areas so hot in the radioactive sense that they would cook a human faster than you can say _microwave dinner. _Some other doors opened into places with completely poisonous gas. And those were just the doors that led to smaller parts of this place. Some doors went out of this world and into others—doors that blocked off holes in other realities. None of those doors into other places were marked in ways that a human being could tell by sight. No, this place was definitely _not _built for user-friendliness, least not friendliness for those damned meat-bags on two legs known as _homo sapiens. _Any human looking for some kind of customer service place to make a complaint can just go to Hell for all the beings of this place cared.

The young male detective reached the door first, running on over even while Heather moved at a walking pace. "Stand back!" shouted. "We don't know if the suspect is armed!"

"Okay, Action-Man. You go get 'em," smirked Heather, taking a step back and putting hands on hips.

Soon as the young detective put a hand on the doorknob, vicious floor-shaking _thumps _and _howling _came from the other side. The source of the noise wasn't pounding on the door itself, yet it was still pretty darned loud and intense enough to make the door jiggle and boogie a little. Whatever was strong enough to raise a ruckus like that was probably very big and very powerful.

Added Heather, "Yeah… You think you can face whatever's on the other side of that door…_all _by yourself? Do you even know what could be in there? How are you so sure that bullets will stop it?"

The young detective clenched his teeth, resisting that action-packed desire to move fast and shoot things. Oh yes, his blood was definitely flowing, the adrenaline juicing him up for some real movie-hero antics. But… There's always a _but _to stall the action, isn't there?

Heather was right. Ordinary bullets were just fine and dandy against those short-little green-skinned freaks in those court-jester tunics and human-skin footwear. Don't forget that funky headgear of theirs, either—made courtesy of flayed bodies. (It would be great fun to find out about what they did with the _rest _of the human bodies after getting the skin, but that shall not be discussed here.) What if there was something on the other side of this door that could eat a million bullets before eating whoever was dumb enough to start shooting at it? "_Damn it,_" hissed the young detective. "So what now?"

"Right now," said Heather, "You're gonna get out of the way while the door gets opened safely. No need to risk getting pounced on while standing in an open doorway, is there?"

An annoyed glance at that petite girl-woman, and the detective did step back and to a side of the door. Then Heather did that trick with the doorknob again—the girl seeming to just look at it. The doorknob turned, and the door seemed to open itself. Look, ma. No hands.

Mentally putting aside the creepiness factor of this act aside, the detective did a quick-peek past the door-jamb. It was a quick peek because training told him that keeping his head out like that made a fine opportunity to be shot. He did another quick glimpse, having in mind two figures. One of them was about Heather's size. The other was gigantic size.

Not fully considering what he just saw, the detective ran in. He saw a gigantic thing that was the size of two elephants and did not care at the moment—his mind not fully processing what that means. He ran in. Heather followed. And the door _slammed _behind them.

…

"That's rude," went Heather, giving an angry glance to the door that nearly whacked her in the ass when it closed. Then her attention turned to the spectacle that had the young detective so dreadfully captivated and looking slack-jawed.

Heather was right about the potential threat on the other side of the door—a threat possibly not stoppable by pitiful small-caliber weaponry. A person would probably be better off maybe having something a _little _more powerful than a pistol. Something like, say…maybe a piece of mobile field artillery—preferably something loaded with armor-piercing shells. With no million-dollar Army hardware on hand, however, it was pretty much up to just those three people in the room to deal with the meat-and-metal creature absolutely dominating this large room of metal-block walls and armor-plate flooring.

Three people? With Heather and the detective, that makes for two people. The third person in the room was already here and trying to get things done—a person in mid-tango with something that was at least three times her height.

It was hard to tell which captured the most attention—the beautiful other girl in this room or the immensely ugly meat-and-metal creature being confronted. Very beautiful, even if it was not bright enough to see all the details. One had an impression of that other girl's slender dancer's body in gray shorts and long-sleeved top. The shorts left pale firm legs bare as her long-sleeved top covered her upper body—a beautiful sweep of midnight-silken extending from scalp and nearly to her waist. Her arms were held in front of her, supporting a pair of large dark pistols that just seemed too big for such slender arms. Fastened to the small of her back was a blood-red blade—one with a low yet distinctly crimson glow even while it was sheathed. The detective thought that he saw a girl like that before in a computer game, something about a woman breaking into tombs and raiding them for treasures. Except the girl in the game didn't look someone who stepped out of an _Evanescence _music video. Nor did the game-girl's pistols look like weapons from a sci-fi flick. And there was something about that knife sheathed low on her back …

As for the creature, it was as big and ugly as the girl was petite and beautiful. Standing at least at the height of a bulldozer and looking to be just as wide, it had a generally human shape. That is, it had two arms and two legs attached to a torso. Speaking of construction equipment, its body had proportions to match—arms thick as small crane-booms, meaty legs that looked as if they could hold up a building…or knock it down. It certainly had the strength to do that, too. Massive heaps of skinless and exposed muscle-tissue was bound to a rust-metal skeleton by barbed wire, the metal skeleton with thick-round motors at the joints. Its gigantic chest was made of more meat over ribs of thick metal rebar, the abdomen full of exposed black-metal components. Topping off this abomination of flesh and machinery was a huge triangular helmet. That helmet looked about the right size and shape of a cockpit from a spaceship movie—provided that the pilot was smaller than a child or a midget. Speaking of short things, one of those green-skinned little guys could probably fit quite snugly in there.

"Hey…" said the detective. "That thing is going to kill her! We've got to do something!" He drew his pistol.

"Don't even try it!" yelled Heather. "You'll just end up dead yourself when that thing comes stomping over here. That pea-shooter of yours isn't the greatest piece of firepower from Earth."

That's when the other girl shouted something—the one who looked like a video-game heroine gone hard-core Goth. Her eyes and pistols were directed at the enemy, yet her statement was directed at Heather. "_S'rbo trevoc, naturn! Oyu! Ne'smirk eul!_"

"Cover your eyes and turn around. Right now," translated Heather. Not that the detective asked, but he was going to ask.

"What?" he asked instead of doing what he was told. Yup, that's the attitude of a rag-bag civilian. Civilians, always having to go ahead and ask a million questions of _why _they have to do something until it's too late.

"Dude!" yelled Heather, grabbing the detective's elbows because this blonde-haired girl was too short to grab him by the shoulders. Heather had to physically make him turn. "Don't look in that direction unless you want your eyeballs burned outta your skull."

As if on signal, the Goth-Croft girl with the strange pistols went to work. _Cr-crack! _Two bright-blue flashes of light lit up this place, matched by a dual sound like thunder.

For a while, the detective couldn't hear anything. And even with his back turned, even while seeing just the _reflection _of the light off of the rust-metal wall, the detective was momentarily blinded. The back of his neck and legs began to feel prickled as if in the aftermath of an intense dry heat—as if lightly _burned through his clothes_.

Looking past the detective, Heather saw what happened without her eyes being affected. Since Heather is…_different, _the bright blue flashes from the strange pistols didn't affect her as much. But the pistols' reports still sounded damned loud.

If the Goth girl's pistols made that much light and noise, then their energy output and firepower must be pretty damned high. They _were _some kick-ass pistols, because they blasted two holes of significant size in the huge creature's chest. White smoke curled from the rear-exits of the holes while dark fluid dribbled from the front. _Big _holes, too. Each new body opening was about the width of a football. (Be it the American or the European understanding of the word football, forget about it. Either ball will do, even if an American football isn't really much of a _ball_.)

Let it be known that the meat-and-metal beast machine was _not _having a ball, though. Never mind if the girl holding the pistols ought to be having a _blast. _A _ho-w-w-wl _of sound from inside the helmet, and the beast-machine went to its knees. Nope, it wasn't going down yet.

That Goth girl in the video-game styled commando-gymnast outfit aimed her pistols again, ready to give another attack. That would be _two _attacks if a person considered how both pistols fired at once. Come one, come all. Come get your blue-blazing double-blast of death! It's two for the price of one. _Cr-crack!_

While the creature was being blasted again over there, the detective felt that hot-blue brightness flash against the back of his body. His hearing wasn't any better after that additional noise, either. "_Make her stop!_" he shouted, barely able to hear his own voice because he was nearly stone-deaf.

Thought Heather, _Do I have to? _Yes, Heather knew that Goth girl's language—that strange girl over there with the even stranger weapons, the language also used by those short-little freaks. Why not, since Heather was not too tall herself? And maybe…Heather came from the same place that _all _the monsters from this place come from. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, as the saying goes.

Before that strange girl over there could fire off those super-weapons of hers _again_, before the detective could start crying and throwing a hissy-fit about _radiation burns _or some mother-forking ship like that, Heather shouted to the girl something in that strange language. And when Heather said the words, it was as if they were spoken all her life. Maybe in another life. "_Eul nema, arap elkric!_"

"_Ne s'msirk yan! Elkric!_" loudly responded the dark-haired girl over there, not taking her green eyes off of the huge enemy. "_Elkric, eul!_"

"What the Hell does _elkric _mean!" yelled the detective, picking up on the only word that he kept hearing. He didn't ask the rest of the words. He also didn't ask about how Heather could understand that bizarro language to begin with.

_Elkric, eul… _Yes, it was high-time that Heather did her thing. At least her means of combat wouldn't expose the detective to any more bright-hot flashes of potentially dangerous radiation. There was the possibility that he'd wet his pants or crap bricks from witnessing Heather's abilities again, but whatever.

Staring at the huge monster, a beast-machine of meat and metal, Heather's rage was just too easy gather and focus. Her thoughts…_turned that certain way. Something happened, the air itself seeming to ripple._

The unseen servants were here. A thump-clacking of clawed feet, sounds of snarls, and one could hear—not see—the invisible things going full-speed toward their prey. It did not matter if the target was three feet tall or three thousand. The unseen servants would always do the bidding of that which summoned them until that which brought and held them here dismissed them. And since the beast-machine didn't even make the first thousand or even the first hundred, the thing only being three yards in height, it would be no problem at all. A sound of huge leathery wings flapping came about as some of the unseen servants went up, but that was about all the trouble they would have.

Now for the slaughter. A huge chunk of meat came away from the huge creature's body, met with a spray of that dark oily fluid and a burst of electrical sparks. More swipes of unseen claws and rips of what could be teeth. There was soon less meat and more damage. _Howls _of protest at such treatment came from inside the big cockpit-helmet atop that mighty body. (Quit crying, you big baby.)

At some point, the big-mighty beast machine was too damaged to stand. It began to topple over…_slamming _chest-first onto the ground—the cockpit-helmet popping off. This revealed the thing which controlled the beast-machine. Not controlled any more, because it was dead even if one couldn't be sure if the thing was alive in the normal sense to begin with.

With their quarry defeated, the unseen servants went away. Again came that now-familiar change to the air when they left. Not a moment too soon, either. Heather couldn't take it any more, her head feeling as if it was about to burst. This time, the girl just gritted her teeth and was able to hold back from screaming, going to her knees as dark fluid began to dribble from her ears and nostrils. Some drops of the fluid came from the edges of her eyelids.

…

2.

…

Those with imaginations that went a little bit wider than usual could perhaps easily envision what was atop the defeated thing's body instead of a head. That wasn't just a helmet in the shape of a cockpit. Hells no. That black-metal piece actually _was _a cockpit. With that knocked away, one could see the dwarf-like pilot—melded by flesh to the upper body of the beast-machine.

The pilot looked a lot like the other little green-skinned freaks that seemed to be scampering around and causing trouble. Except that freak wasn't wearing one of those tunics with an eye painted on the front or wearing fashion accessories that were fashioned from human skin—a naked little green dude. Well… The nudity didn't matter much since only its nasty upper body was exposed—well-muscled but with skin that was heavily gnarled with cancerous lumps and open sores. Its lower body was mixed with the muscular workings of the beast-machine's neck. Its hands were lost to sight in the same way. Whatever it was, it was dead. The monstrous pilot was dead, and so was the beast-machine it was controlling.

Having seen his fill of the beast-machine and somehow distracted from looking at that strange girl with her even-stranger pistols, the detective went to kneel by Heather's side. He knew better than to try touching her.

Just being this close, he could feel the intense heat coming from Heather. Coming into contact with her mean adding burnt hands to the mix—bad since the detective was already singed a bit at his back. Comments about Heather being _one hot babe _need not apply.

Said Heather in a tired voice, "I'll be okay. Just gimme a sec…"

Then came the sound of booted heels as that other girl approached. The detective looked up from his position by Heather to look…and stare. He was _very _glad that he was not blinded by the intense fireworks of that gunfight. Otherwise, he would not have had the chance to look at somebody who _definitely _would have given Heather more than a little competition in a beauty contest.

If the girl was beautiful from a distance, her appearance was downright irresistible this close. Her gray shorts left pale firm legs exposed, shorts going with a similarly gray long-sleeved top—clothing which closely outlined the shape of firm hips unto slender torso and lean arms. Despite such a slender figure, her breasts seemed larger than they had to be. Bootlets covered her feet, and black gloves encased her hands. Her long dark hair hung back and away from her sharp-featured face, silky darkness that went back and down to her slender waist…where a sheathed and glowing crimson blade was attached horizontally across the small of her back. The weapon glowed with an eerie energy though it was sheathed.

"_Elu sgin-neet. Intemelessy ma ai._" said the girl, her beautiful face as solidly impassive as that of a living mannequin, her eyes that really bright-blue color that was almost silver.

The detective didn't say anything at first. What _could _he say? This wasn't like that show where the crew-members of a space-ship had universal-translator machines which made them able to understand all the languages of the galaxy. (Funny thing was, the translation machines on that show made everybody sound like Harvard law-school graduates.) To the detective's ears, the language seemed like gibberish. Gibberish said in an orderly fashion, gibberish that no doubt communicated something, but still…gibberish. Make that _beautiful _gibberish, coming from the blood-red lips of that exotically beautiful girl.

He had to say something or seem like a complete dumb-ass—keeping eye-contact while trying not to ogle the _rest _of her. "Did you just say hello?" asked the detective, still kneeling by Heather. No doubt, he would have wanted to be kneeling in marriage proposal to this new girl. "I'm sorry. I don't speak your language."

One of Heather's elbows uh…_accidentally _thumped the detective in the side. "You don't have to understand her language." To further kill the mood, Heather hocked up a great big loogie of dark stuff from her mouth, spit it between the bars of some floor-grating. "Intemelessy just didn't know what language _you _speak and went with the usual. That's her name, by the way."

"Inte…?" began the detective, looking at the dark-haired girl with the strange pistols at her hips. "I can't pronounce that."

The dark-haired girl began speaking in perfectly legitimate though slightly accented English—an accent which could be something between German and French with maybe a hint of Martian. "You may identify me as Intemelessy Sinomen. It is the nearest analog in your language to my name. I am a Huntress sent to be of assistance."

Heather stood up, wincing a little and giving pause as a little glance of pain cut through her head. Standing up too fast, that's the problem—herself still recovering that recent expenditure of her ability. There wouldn't be more demonic destructive tricks from magic-girl any time soon, at least not until her head was feeling relatively headache-free. Said Heather, "You're the thing that Mel told us to get. Hmm..."

That said, Heather took a slow walk around Intemelessy, openly admiring this newcomer from all angles. Intemelessy simply stood there and accepted the inspection—cold-blue eyes passive as a machine's visual sensors. 

_Wow! If I'd known we were gonna pick up a hottie, I would've told the detective to drive a little faster! Too bad about you being… _Heather didn't say that out loud. Instead, "Too bad you're not real. We could probably have a really good time. Well, _I _could have a time. You probably wouldn't get much out of it."

"_What-are-you-talking-about?_" sputtered the detective, his words running together. Yup, the young man was reaching the end of his rope. Getting snatched into another world (or planet…or time…or _wherever _the fork they are) by midget-creatures, just seeing real-life _monsters _at all, then witnessing a sexy Goth girl with sci-fi weaponry do battle to the death with something probably six times her size… All of this was just too damned much. Now Heather was saying that this cutie with the amazing eyes and a body to match, this new girl _wasn't real? _What the Hell is going on here? "Not real!"

"Heather's right," casually said a familiar male voice, coming from darkness at the edges of this huge room. He walked into view, carrying something in his left hand. "Intemelessy is not a real person. Heather, this is for you."

"A health drink!" exclaimed Heather, all smiles and happiness suddenly, accepting the pint-sized bottle. "Mel, I'll love you for this! Ooh, and it's all nice and icy too!" A twist of the cap, and Heather began gulping down the dark, cinnamon-colored liquid. Her headache vanished as soon as the stuff went down her throat and into the rest of herself. Headache? _What _headache? Drinking this could make her forget that headaches exist at all.

The detective had never seen that product before. He didn't recognize the bottle's odd label and he definitely didn't even think that the fluid Heather was guzzling could even be safely consumed. Heather's right hand covered most of the label, which didn't help with his identification of it. He would just have to wait for her to finish drinking the stuff, which didn't take long.

Heather finished off the drink and glared at the detective. "Get your own! This bottle is one dead soldier." As if to drive home the point, the blonde-haired girl upturned the bottle. No more drops came out. "See? All gone."

"No… I just want to see the label," said the detective. "I'm not too keen on my clients consuming substances from total strangers in an alternate time-space continuum."

Heather gave a frown before twisting the cap back on and handing it over. "He's not a total stranger," was her response, glancing over at Mel. "You're not a total stranger, right Mel?"

"Maybe I am!" said Mel. "Just strange in ways that I'm not admitting right now. Some things are best left to the imagination, even if Intemelessy's outfit doesn't." He smiled. "Isn't that right, Heather?"

"I wasn't staring at her!" quickly yelled Heather, just before realizing that Mel hadn't said anything about her doing so. "What's it to you if I was?"

Responded Mel, "So you're a girl that likes girls. So what? If you want to get together with Intemelessy a little later…" He winked. "The gynoid wouldn't care what you do with her. They didn't program in any moral scruples."

The detective was too busy puzzling over the label of the health drink. This was a liquid product that he had never seen before. It was indeed labeled as being a _health drink _according to the small writing on the side.

_Health Drink (2 pints). Distributed and bottled by Thunderhorse Corporation, City of Nebraska. _

That failed to make much sense to the detective since he knew damn well that Nebraska is supposed to be a _state, _not a _city._ (Never mind if the rest of the world would consider _states _in the _United States _be more like _provinces _or _territories_. American politics has a very distinct and unique usage of language and vocabulary.)And Nebraska was pretty far from being urban. In fact, Nebraska is almost about as far from being urban and city-fied as a Midwestern farm-boy country can get—Nebraska being a place with its amber waves of grain, big-wide fields and areas so sparsely populated that neighbors sometimes existed miles apart. And what was up with the Thunderhorse Corporation?

"The _Thunderhorse _Corporation?" asked the detective aloud. "Never heard of them. If they are a big enough concern to manufactures beverages, then everyone must have heard of them at some point. I haven't."

Said Mel, "Too bad. The Thunderhorse Corporation makes some really groovy stuff, probably using some of the best technology humanity will ever get to use. In fact, they even made Intemelessy."

The detective gave pause. Did that kid just say…_groovy_? And why were they still talking about that girl that way, the girl with a name the detective could not pronounce? "Made…? Inte…"

Mel helped him along. "Hey, man. Take it one syllable at a time. _Inte, _like intersection without the _r. _Then say _mah, _Add a _lessy_, like the word _less _with a _y._ In-te-me-less-y."

"Intemelessy," said the detective, looking into the unbelievably silvery-blue eyes of that girl. "Your name sounds English or French…?"

"Incorrect," said Intemelessy. "My name is not a product of either language or any dialects. The name produced for your convenience and verbal-written identification is a composite linguistic analogue."

It took a good long few seconds for the young detective to maybe understand what was just said. Basically, the moniker given by this strange new girl was as close to the real name that the detective could get without some impossible mouth-gymnastics…though he suspected that Heather could probably say that other girl's real name. Why not? Heather spoke the other girl's language.

He would have to remember to ask Heather about what the language was—some kind of trans-dimensional space-demon speech or something, not that he hoped to ever understand it himself. Maybe in some other world, there were linguistics courses entitled, _Introduction to Inter-dimensional Linguistics._ Then again, those classes could be populated by things like six-armed tentacle creatures with mouths at the centers of their bodies, or some other brands of creatures with parts in all the wrong places—wrong from the _human _perspective. Who knows, maybe attending such a hypothetical class, he'd get a chance to meet a few of those gray aliens that the supermarket tabloids keep writing about? Then they'd probably zap him in the gut with one of their ray-guns and take him away in a flying saucer.

Speaking of trans-dimensional antics… Mel spoke up. "I think you all should be getting back." He gestured to the fallen beast-machine which sat politely quiet (and stayed politely _dead_) during this happy little gathering. "Things like _that _or worse can show up at any time."

Heather glanced at the empty bottle of health drink still held by the detective. It was a good while since the girl had some of that substance, forgetting how _great _it was. After all, the only place in the world—in _her _world at least—in which one could health drinks would be in or near Silent Hill, some of which was manufactured by the Thunderhorse Corporation. That's probably because the Thunderhorse Corporation was just as nonexistent as the Indiana Creek Association and the Beltran Empire. No super-tech corporation, no yummy health-drinks. _Sucks, _thought Heather, thinking that the delicious liquid was maybe worth going through the Hell-next-door to get.

"Alright," said Heather. "Let's get outta this dump. But I want more of the stuff if you find it, Mel."

"I gotcha," agreed Mel. "Follow me. The way back is the way you came in. Things haven't changed around here for a few thousand years, so you ought to be good for the return trip by using the same door."

The detective wanted to ask a few thousand questions about that last remark. He wanted to ask questions on top of questions. But everyone else was just going along with all of this insane craziness as if they've lived it before.

Leaving the place where they defeated the beast-machine, they entered that long metal-lined industrial hallway before going to a familiar-looking door. For some reason, even if most all the doors in this place looked very much like every other door in this place, this one just looked like a winner. Mel let Heather do the honors—the door seeming to open by itself, doorknob twisting without human hands on it. The four members of this group walked out of this dark-metal place and…_into an intense brightness…_

…

"_Quit sleeping on the job!_" came Heather's shout from the back seat. The detective jerked his head up from the steering wheel. "Nap-time's for kindergarteners and old codgers! Since you aren't one or the other, you've still gotta do what I say. So get this heap moving! Chop-chop! Post-haste!"

Sitting up and still coming to his senses, the detective squinted against the bright fogginess of the highway. He first thought it was all just a dream. Driving Heather to the location indicated by the map, then experiencing a whole bunch of craziness about strange midget-men, drop-dead sexy Goth girls and big monsters that really did die—big monsters controlled by little monsters riding high in cockpit-helmets.

He thought it a dream. Then he saw looked up into the mirror and saw that Heather wasn't alone in the passenger-side seat.

He twisted himself around to see Heather…and the _other girl. _Yes, it was _her_—sitting with bare knees together and black-gloved hands atop her lap. In fact, Intemelessy was sitting exactly the same way that Heather was sitting. Intemelessy was matching the local customs much as how a foreigner visiting a different culture would. When in Rome…

The detective looked from Heather to Intemelessy. He particularly looked at Intemelessy—just lost in those amazing silvery-blue eyes of hers.

"Oh!" went Heather, breaking the spell (again). "Almost forgot to tell you. Mel said he'd catch up with us later. Us, as in Intemelessy and me. Not too sure you can handle this stuff, so Intemelessy is gonna be my bodyguard for a while. After you drive us back to my place, you can go back to the agency."

He wasn't fired, but he was off the case. Damn, and just when he wanted to be in the case for a pretty good reason… A reason with a supermodel's drop-dead, sexy good looks—more like it. Too bad Intemelessy didn't return the sentiment.

The detective turned back to the steering wheel, twisting the ignition. At first, the car's engine did that revving thing, not starting. Then the thing decided to cooperate and did start. If it didn't… Well, it would be a few hours worth of hiking _that _way to get out to where somebody can try sticking out a thumb and hitching a ride. Most traffic tended to stay away from here. Only _crazy _people go to Silent Hill. And maybe, they came away either being cured of their sanity or crazier than when they went in.

He put this car through a k-turn on a mountain road that had a great big cliff on a side was a little bit worrisome, but it was doable—certainly more doable than fighting a dozen or so little guys before fighting a great-big huge guy. Not that the detective would be involved this tale from this point forward, but there would be more freaks to face. Not all of the encounters would result in happy outcomes.


	7. Chapter 7

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 7

…

1.

…

_Whamp-p-p! _That is the sound of the odd prisoner slamming hishead full-force into this jail-cell wall—skin and skull-bone hitting a concrete wall covered with rows of symbols. For an entire hour before that, he had been staring angrily at the written letters and symbols. All of that anger had to come out somewhere, and ramming his noggin against the writing seemed to be just the thing. (Didn't you ever hear the saying, might as well be banging your head against a brick wall?)

The odd prisoner didn't move. Not that he was hurt, somehow escaping harm. It was more like a dramatic pause. A person would have expected something to break from that impact, either the bonework of the bearded man's skull or the public-institution concrete of the jail-cell wall. Neither broke. The wall was still physically intact, and so was the odd prisoner's head—the head that contained the thoughts going into making those symbols.

In that moment, Jimmy oh-so-carefully leaned over from his place on the top bunk to see the results. He looked just a bit like a kid brother peeking over the edge of a bed to see if something scary was there. Except now, Jimmy was a grown-up in one of the most grown-up places possible.

Yes, there _was _something scary here—a kind of monster in human form. The _monster_ had just tested the structural integrity of the wall with the part of his anatomy that held his brain. And as with any person seeing a monster, Jimmy could not help _but_ stare—rude as staring may be according to everyone's parents. It's not polite.

_No such thing as monsters, _thought Jimmy. _The guy probably has some kind of kind of condition. What do they call it? Epilepsy? _"Are you okay?" he asked aloud

Dark chuckles sounded out. Jimmy not only heard it coming from the odd prisoner's mouth, he also heard it coming from all the walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the _air_. It was as if the whole jail cell was turned into one of those surround-sound systems—except better and scarier. That dark chuckling came from all directions in here. Laugh, and the whole world laughs with you—or at least a jail cell, and at least if you've got real-live magic-powers.

The surround-sound laughter stopped. Then the odd prisoner pulled his head back from the wall. A dark-blue smudge was dead-center of the forehead. Without any apparent symptoms of head injury besides that, the odd prisoner spoke in that too-calm voice…

He said, "There are moments in which the most severe challenges can pose a significant threat to one's focus. Indeed, such a moment has come to pass. The threat to my plans has not merely doubled but trebled." He gestured to the wall with his right hand, and the lights…_flick-flickered._

The wall changed. Instead of there being dozens of rows of those odd symbols, now some of those symbols had _flickered _aside to form a circle.

"You are my witness, Jimmy," continued the odd prisoner in that too-calm voice of his. "As such, it is expected that you take on more than a pedestrian knowledge of the great works. Immerse your sight in the symbols. Tell me of what you come to see."

Jimmy did so. At first, it was like the writing on the wall was just a lot of strange marks and squiggles. But as he looked, he suddenly began to _see something_. "Jeez!" he exclaimed, though the Christian savior most likely had nothing to do with this unholy business.

It was like a life-sized optical illusion on drugs. When he was on the outside (out of prison, that is), he used to look at the backs of those cereal boxes while eating—a habit he had since he was a kid. Sometimes, they print those optical illusion-tricks where—if you let your eyes go unfocused and let your mind see the overall pattern—you can see things that aren't really there. Some people can't get it to work because they're trying too hard. The trick is to _not _try. But Jimmy, it didn't even take a second to see what there was to see within the illusion…which seemed so damned _real _now.

He was seeing…_a three-dimensional map of some place. _No, better than that—better than three-dee. Make that, a _six-dimensional _vision. It takes two eyes to see in three dimensions, but here… The writing on the wall taps into the third eye that everyone has—the mind's eye_._ Better than that, it was like Jimmy had grown a _whole new set of eyeballs _inside of his head just for that writing—able to see in more directions and ways than a human is supposed to see. It sounds impossible, but nothing is impossible once it becomes possible. This was…super-possible.

Getting over the shock of this psycho-new way of mind-sight, Jimmy saw…a landscape of patterns. He could see that some symbols stood for landforms and structures. Some of them were imposed over layers of other places, as if someone drew one thing on top of another and both images were visible. He could see how places in this world are made up of more than one layer, different layers of…_other worlds._ So _this _was what the odd prisoner was working with. And now, Jimmy could see how all kinds of _other _things were possible. 

But…he saw something else. Just as he was also able to see parts of the world in the layers and patterns of symbols, he was also able to see a problem. Something woven into the pattern was absolutely wrecking the whole thing. The word _girl _came to mind, along with _allies._ Who the Hell…?

_Flick-flicker. _A right-hand gesture from the prisoner, a _flicker _of lights, and it all vanished—no more mind's-eye visions of patterns, no seeing layers of other worlds, none of that. Now Jimmy was mindful of being back in the prison cell. Here he was, just an ordinary guy in an ordinary prisoner's getup, looking at a wall covered with weird writing.

"_Whoa!_ That was friggin' _awesome, _man!" he said to the odd prisoner. "Where'd you learn how to do _that?_ And why's that girl such a problem?"

The odd prisoner put on a small smile. "I am pleased to see your rather overt approval for the venture." His smile went away. "However, the threat to the great works is incorrectly identified_. _A _girl _is a human female, much in the same way that a female pig is known as a _sow_, or a female dog is more perhaps derogatorily labeled a _bitch_. The disruptive faction to my works could be considered female in the biological sense, yet the _female _is not human. Therefore, _it _is not a girl, even if it has the physical appearance and name of one. Do you see the distinction?"

"I think so…" went Jimmy. Since Jimmy read a lot, he was able to understand most of what the odd prisoner said—even if the odd prisoner talks like somebody who memorized all twenty volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary (Unabridged). "So what you're saying is, the girl's not human?"

"Rather crudely speaking… Yes. Such is the case," answered the odd prisoner. A pause. "So tell me. Have you ever _tasted _the flesh of a girl? I do not mean in the carnal sense. This is said in the most literal way possible. As in, consumption."

"_He-hey, _man! What are you talking about?" asked Jimmy, getting all nervous and sweaty. _Eating a girl…? _

Ladies and gentlemen, our conversation has now gone into…_Psycho Land! _Please keep your head and hands inside of the vehicle at all times, lest those parts of your anatomy be _bitten off _by the native madmen. But Jimmy didn't _want _to go to Psycho Land in conversation or otherwise. He could feel hot pricklies all over—the kind of feeling which means to _get the Hell outta there._

Thing is, there would no getting out of a prison cell. That's the point of a prison—a place with rooms that locks people in. It wasn't like some interior designer (usually depicted as a stereotypical homosexual on television) thought it would be _thimply fabulouth _(can't forget that lisp) to create rooms with metal bars being part of the décor. Nope, the bars and the three hard walls are there to keep dudes in—dudes like bank robbers, serial rapists and killers that all go for high scores and achievements before they're finally caught.

As if ignoring or not caring for Jimmy's emotional distress, the odd prisoner continued. "The flesh of a young girl… So firm yet tender, their sweet bodies make for a _delicious _experience. I can assure you, there is no other culinary experience so exquisite and refined as a feast in which the main course is a girl whose head is cut off, her body prepared for dinner prior to her twentieth birthday. On more than one occasion, I have been immensely privileged to partake in such a _delightful_ event. I do not mean _this _world, of course.

"Other worlds… There are other worlds beside this one. Some of them are just as civilized and industrialized as this one. Others are more so. It was in one of those worlds in which I have partaken in my first culinary event involving the before-mentioned dish. Some groups of people in those other places are bred and raised, from birth, to have their flesh consumed. This may seem rather contrarian to notions of order and decency, yet consider analogous circumstances. Some people are born and raised to be grand statesmen and orators, while some are sociologically fated to sweep floors and maintain infrastructure. So it is just a small leap of logic that dictates some humans born and raised to have their bodies eaten.

"Some of those other worlds, I should say, have other intelligent beings besides humans. This also implies that not all the worlds are dominated by human beings. In fact, to merely have humans alone being intelligent enough for civilization is an aberration."

By this point, Jimmy looked an awful lot like someone who gripped a high-voltage wire during a rainstorm. His eyes were wide. His whole body was stiff. But unlike somebody being juiced up with 20,000 volts, he at least had a steady heartbeat—one going a few hundred beats per minute.

"Do not look so awestruck, my witness," oozed the odd prisoner. "Such prospects seem rather…_monstrous _to you_. _Yet it is simply a matter of one's…point of view. _Moral relativism_ is the pertinent term among anthropologists. There _are _other worlds, my witness. Other worlds…"

Biting back a scream, Jimmy had his jaws clenched so tight that it would probably take some serious equipment to get open—maybe the kind of equipment that firefighters use to pry open smashed car doors to evacuate highway accident victims. The odd prisoner is _cra-a-azy-y-y! _It wasn't like the odd prisoner was wearing a mask made out of skin and swinging a bloody chainsaw, yet the _things he said _were completely out there. (What the _Hell _did Jimmy do to deserve ending up in the cell of a psycho? Oh, that's right. He's a _mommy killer, _according to the forked-up verdict.) No joke, this odd prisoner was talking about other worlds full of monsters, some of them _run _by monsters, where people can get gobbled up. And the odd prisoner was as calm as you please when he was talking Psycho-Land lingo, too.

Worst of all, Jimmy somehow had the notion that the odd prisoner was telling the truth. Other worlds, cosmic patterns seen by way of writings on a wall, impossible things becoming possible, it was all real somehow. Just as how the odd prisoner could use weird writing on the wall to make six-dimensional shapes do _real-live magic, _there was no doubt that what he was saying was just as real.

_Real magic, _that is. Screw the hocus-pocus, abracadabra, wop-bobba-loobop stuff that performers in Vegas do on stage. This is the real deal, baby! Jimmy was scared and thrilled at the same time.

Being as calm as Jimmy was not, the odd prisoner mused aloud, "Does this talk make you uncomfortable? I can sense a distinct agitation within you. The appeal of other worlds hearkens to you, and your mind is drawn to it like the proverbial moth to flame. Yet you still hold yourself to the moral scruples of this world, this country, this _state._ The human laws of this pathetic place are a collective anchor to hold you here. Release yourself of this world's petty ideals, and only then shall you be truly free. Now, let me show you an example of how it is done."

As with before, the odd prisoner made a quick gesture. Suddenly, there was suddenly a dull-red piece of sharpened chalk in the odd prisoner's right hand. Except, _this _kind of chalk couldn't be found in an art-student's studio.

"Many religions throughout the world ascribe an innate importance to bodily substances," said the odd prisoner. "Be it the blood of church worship, the milky secretions from stone idols, or even the bodily remains of martyrs, something of power is within the material. The materials, the _substances, _they can hold power at time_._" He held up the dull-red chalk-thing much in the same way that a sorcerer of legends would hold up a wand. "This, my witness, is made from such a sacred material. It is from this which much can be done by one of proper knowledge. Behold an act of the great works." He then turned to wall and began doing some more of that writing.

And the odd prisoner wrote _fast. _His right hand was a rapid blur of motion. It was a wonder that faint wisps of smoke didn't start coming up from that quickness. Whole new rows of strange letters and symbols came into existence. A superhero appearing in real life wouldn't even be able to keep up with the odd prisoner's right hand at the moment—probably not even the superhero who wore his underwear outside blue tights and had the nineteenth letter of the English alphabet on his chest. And when the jail-cell lights began to _flick-flicker, _it seemed like the odd prisoner was writing even faster than that.

Something _slammed _into the wall, the shock nearly knocking Jimmy off of his bunk. The lights went out for a second before coming back on. When things seemed settled enough, Jimmy looked around to see what just happened.

There was a _hole _in the wall, a dark hole. That thing was not only dark itself, it was as if the edges of the hole were also dimmed. Jimmy squinted, because it was like the hole was playing with his eyes or something. That darkness was shifting a little, darkness shifting within darkness. He could hear _sounds _coming from in there, too. It wasn't just the wind either, sounding like wind howling through an infinite void, or more like air being sucked out of this world and into that one.

The darkness, seemed to draw him in. The _darkness _wanted him in. Into the darkness. Go in…

Oh, _damn _no. Jimmy didn't want to go into there. He didn't want to go into there any more than a six-year-old kid would willing enter a windowless basement in the dead of night…with all the lights out…a week before Halloween. It was like a kid can see _things _in the darkness below. Come on down, little boy. Heh-heh, we won't hurt you—not for long. Come willingly, and we'll make it quick! You won't feel a thing. After that… Well, you won't care what happens once you're dead. Dead people don't care.

The odd prisoner gave a knowing nod and smile to Jimmy. "Indeed, you still are attached to this world's fear for the flesh," he said. "This is the act of someone who is _free_." Then the odd prisoner dove into that hole, his prison-issue footwear the last to vanish—the darkness swallowing him whole.

_No! _Jimmy lurched, gripping the edge of his bunk. It was too damned late, and he was too damned far away to make a grab for the odd prisoner. Jimmy may be a convicted mommy killer, but he still cared about people. He didn't want the odd prisoner to do that crazy thing which was just done. Too late, it already was done. The odd prisoner was gone into that hole darker than the darkness of the universe_._ Just…_swoosh._

A good long moment later, Jimmy got himself off of the bunk. Great timing, by the way. It only took a whole _few _minutes for him to finally move …_lo-o-o-ong _after the odd prisoner made that flying leap into gosh-knows-where.

Curiosity struck. Walking _very carefully, _as if to avoid alerting something that would _snatch him in, _Jimmy crept up onto the hole in the jail-cell wall—keeping at what should be arm's length. Or maybe, some of the things waiting in the darkness could reach out with _tentacles_, not arms. They'd snatch his dumb-ass self into the hole fast as a mother-forker. And if he _did _get snatched, he deserved it just for being the dumbass he was.

As an old saying goes (and old sayings have a lot to say about a lot of things), there is a thin line between bravery and stupidity. Not only was Jimmy crossing that line, he was tap-dancing across that bitch with bells on and accompanied by a Broadway musical soundtrack. Next stop, Stupidville—if not oblivion.

He put his left hand close to the wall next to the _hole…_and snatched it back. It was _cold._ That, and he thought something sucked at him—making the hand feel numb and tingly for a little while. That's just great. He ought to stick his head in next. Liable to get it _ripped off _too, probably. (We said we'd make it quick, little boy. Didn't we? We _promise._)

No, he didn't. He didn't get his stupid head ripped off of his stupid body. That's probably in no small part due to him keeping his curiosity-driven stupid self away from the hole in the first place.

Some folks are no doubt feeling dismayed at this development, robbed the experience of seeing somebody having his head _r-r-ripped _off, blood spurting from a neck-stump like a spasmodic with a squirt-gun, his headless body strutting herky-jerky, doing the dead-dude boogie before falling to twitch. Twitching even while he was supposed to be _dead_. Nope, nuh-uh. So sorry, folks. There is no decapitation at this time. Please roll your tongues back into your mouths.

So, standing at a questionably safe distance of nine steps away from the hole, Jimmy could still hear the wind howling between this world and the world beyond. He could stare into the darkness that was darker than the universe. He could still…

Not for long. A dry crackling like fire, a hushing rush of sound, and the hole quick-faded out of existence. Now there was just the hard-solid reality of the jail-cell wall with those neat rows and rows of writing on it. The hole was gone, and so was the odd prisoner for now. The odd prisoner was somewhere else entirely.

…

2.

…

After dinner in the penitentiary's dining hall, the likes of which looked like a cross between a high-school gymnasium and cafeteria, Jimmy joined the collective human migration back to the prison cells. The prisoners almost never make any trouble because all the prison guards have shotguns. _Plenty _of targets for those shotguns too, lots of jailbirds to choose from. And with shotguns, it's pretty darned hard to miss. Nobody wanted to get blasted (yet), so they didn't cause any trouble this evening.

Speaking of trouble, Jimmy was glad he wasn't in it. He thought that he was going to be in for a grilling from the corrections officers since his cellmate was gone. It's not like people are supposed to leave a penitentiary whenever they damned well please, damn it.

But what could he say if he was cornered and confronted? _The odd prisoner? He used a magic spell to get out for a little while. You know how a stage magician can make a whole pitcher of buttermilk disappear? Those guys suck compared to him. The odd prisoner can make _himself _disappear. _

Jimmy didn't have to bring up that argument because the prison-guards didn't make it an issue at all—just like how Jimmy didn't get his head ripped off earlier. In that case, Jimmy wouldn't have been able to talk anyway. The technology required to get a severed human head up and running—or up and talking, rather—wouldn't be on the consumer market for another few decades or so, after all.

Did the prison guards say anything when the odd prisoner turned up missing for dinner time? Nope. Did they say anything about the odd prisoner not being there _after _dinnertime? _Nope, _again. Of course not. Don't be ridiculous. This is the _odd prisoner _we are dealing with—the bearded dude who can get away with murder because he made the warden his bitch. And if the prison guards valued their jobs, they'd keep their forking mouths shut about it too.

…

Jimmy had the jail cell all to himself when it was lights-out time. Of course it's not a complete and total black-out. Mainly, it's the overhead lights in the prison cells that go out while most of the big main lights are set to low. An inmate can still see enough to get around in his jail-cell due to the indirect glow from out there, like illumination from the world's biggest night-light setup.

It was in this indirect glow that Jimmy climbed up into his bunk, laying himself down with his head nearest the part of the wall that had the odd writing on it. Jimmy usually never slept that. It was just something he did right now without really thinking about it, much as how a tired man will accidentally put shaving cream on his toothbrush and proceed to scrub (_yech_), or a slightly deranged elderly person will run over a pedestrian (_crunch_) and keep on driving. Be it a mouthful of soapy nastiness or the gore-smeared underside of a car, things happen when people go about their daily tasks without thinking about them sometimes.

Remember how the odd prisoner got out of this-here jail-cell by way of a _hole _in reality? The thing is, there is no such thing as a perfectly neat hole in the fabric of time and space. It is possible to open such holes and close them up well enough to make it seem as if nothing happened. To rip and tear open such a thing in the first place is nothing to be taken lightly. Once a rip is opened and somewhat closed, some kinds of _leakage _can happen—leakage from outside of this reality…and _into _this reality.

And look-here folks, Jimmy was sleeping with his _head _not even three feet from where the hole was closed up, the wall with all of that weird writing. Yes, it was the same head that didn't get ripped off earlier. Maybe if it did, Jimmy would've learned his lesson—even if it would've been the last lesson he learned in his life. He drifted off into sleep, not at all caring about _what the Hell _was wrong with having _his damned-fool noggin _right up close to a _weak place in reality._ He's headed for a place where dreams…_come true. Let it be known, they aren't necessarily happy dreams. That's right, kiddies. Jimmy is going for a ride._

…

_When Jimmy found himself in the passenger seat of a car—a car darkly zooming along a night-time highway—he didn't really question how or why he was there. All that he knew was that it was dark out. Dark, except for the patch of zooming roadway ahead that was…_illuminated by the car's headlights and maybe the dim sides of the road. Every so often, this car would cut through some floating dull-colored wisps of mist, the wisps seeming to be the color of powdered blood_._

_This is a highway that's somewhere else, _thought Jimmy._ Parts of it turn off into that town. _Now all sorts of things were coming to mind, things associated with _that _town. All of those stories people told of twisted nightmarish things that ought not exist, all of those anecdotes and rumors he had heard and read, they were _all _coming back to him. No way… _No forking way _would he willingly take a ride on the wild side in going to _that _abandoned town, _especially _not in a darkness like this. He wouldn't even go there in full daylight. _He did not want to be headed for Silent Hill._

Too bad, buckaroo. This-here horseless carriage is goin' full-speed fer that-thar place. Yew punch yer ticket, yew take yer ride.

Jimmy didn't want this ride. He wanted _out _and didn't care how fast they were going. The car's engine sounded really calm and smooth, but the way the road was rushing by—the patch of road illuminated by the headlights—he'd estimate that they were going…say, maybe fast enough to break vehicular ground-speed records for the next few centuries. He didn't care if this car was going faster than a rocket ship with Star-Trek warp engines up its ass and a pill-popping speed-demon at the controls, he not give a damn. So what if jumping out would mean having his skin ripped off by way of a full-body road-rash? So what if he risked being killed with his vertebrae broken in six places? _Priority one was getting the fork out of this car before it reached that town._

He was already putting up a mighty effort in trying to get this car-door open. But, just because he was trying didn't mean that he _could. _The door-lock was the kind where you put your thumb under the plastic piece and pull up in case the electric switch doesn't work. Though the electrical system of this vehicle was functional enough to keep headlights blazing and engine humming, the electric switch didn't work. And the plastic thumb-latch of the lock wasn't moving either. Jimmy even tried _both _thumbs. He just could not get it to budge.

Since he couldn't unlock it, there was no getting out unless he bashed the window with something. All full of get-the-Hell-out crazy power, squinting his eyes, neck muscles primed, Jimmy pulled his head away from the window and prepared for the head-butt of his life…

Then came the kindest, gentlest woman's voice that he had ever heard. "I'm so sorry, sweetie. You can't get out that way. There's just no getting off this path you're on."

No longer preparing to use his forehead as a battering ram, Jimmy very slowly sat back in his seat. He then turned his head to look at the woman driving this car. Seeing her face from this side, he saw that the young woman was beautiful—a nice-looking pretty lady dressed in a blue summer dress that outlined a decent figure, her short-cut curly dark hair meeting the edge of elegant cheekbones. The woman was not beautiful in that slutty-sexy way. No, this is the kind of beauty which brings to mind visits to flower shops and gentle autumn weddings—definitely weddings because the woman looked to be the marrying kind.

Except, this woman never did get married to the man who was the father of her child. That's because the woman was killed in a drunk-driving accident. More specifically, the accident directly involved a rich man in a very expensive car and indirectly involving someone else sitting here_._

The woman turned her head to look at Jimmy. Doing this showed how the left-side of her head was a complete mess. Not only was the skin scraped and _smashed _off, part of her skull was sheared away on that side—showing little pieces of bone mixed in with red-tinged gray stuff. As to how the eyeball on that side stayed intact, that was probably impossible. Then again, in a place where dead women can take penitentiary inmates for night-time rides, a lot of other things ought to be impossible too while happening anyway.

"_I'm sorry! It wasn't me!_" screamed Jimmy, tears coming from his eyes. "_I didn't kill you! I'm sorry-I'm-sorry-I'm-sorry…_" He became a blubbering mess. The man was apologizing for something that wasn't his fault, yet the fact that the mother of a young child mother was killed was all the reason in the world to be sorry.

The dead woman turned to face the night-darkened highway ahead, once more hiding the ruined side of her head. A sort of carelessness came into her voice. Her voice was still sweet and gentle, but there wasn't a lot of care into the words. "I know, sweetie. I know… It's just that you have to know what has to happen. Let me tell you a story.

"Once upon a time, in another place, there was a very bad man. This very bad man lived in a world that was broken. First, the very bad man was sad. Then he became _angry. _

"Because this very bad man lived somewhere that was broken, he wanted to make all the other places broken, too. The very bad man thought that everything would be made better again once all the worlds were broken, just as daytime comes back after night.

"The very bad man found out how to break all the worlds. His world was a mess, but there were some places that still worked. One of them was very important. In fact, it was one of the most important places _ever_.

"This place was beautiful. It was so big and pretty with magic beams in the sky and music in the wind if you listened for it…. Why would anyone want to hurt the very important place?

"The very bad man did not care. He sent his servants to kidnap people, including little boys and girls, people with magic powers to break that important place, break those beams. It was how he would do what he wanted to do.

"He had servants to help him too. His servants were not just bad people. Oh no. The very bad man also had…_monsters. _ These bad people and monsters were not as bad as the very bad man, but they did what he told them to do. He made the bad people and monsters put the children to work in a very big-tall machine that could break the big pretty magic beams in the sky of that world, beams that run through all the worlds but not with us able to see them.

"A hero and his friends stopped the very bad man before the last of the magic beams could be broken. The hero and his friends stopped the very bad machine. Then the hero was able to stop the very bad man himself forever, we hope. We hope…"

As Jimmy listened to this, he just knew that this story could not have a happy ending. Though the dead woman told the tale with all the kind gentleness an adult tells a child, the outcome simply could not mean that everyone was left off happily ever after. That's not how the story goes.

The dead woman told the remainder of her take on the story. "The hero stopped the magic beams from being broken. But…the hero could not fix the beams that were already broken. In some worlds, some places were weak. That is where monsters come from, even monsters that did not know or care about the very bad man.

"That is not all. Though the very bad man was stopped, the very bad man's throne was empty.

"There are still lots of bad people and monsters in that broken world. They are waiting for someone to come and tell them what to do. It does not matter if that person is from the broken world or _any_ other place. If someone finds a way to use bad magic to go to that bad place, then the throne will no longer be empty. Then there will be another very bad man."

Jimmy felt tears coming from his own eyes. He had never heard or read that story before. But something was too true about it. It was a story that felt more true and real than he was. "_What can I do?_" he practically sobbed. "Please lady… _Tell me_."

The dead woman kindly told him. "You have to be ready, sweetie. You have to be sure that the things happening don't keep you from telling the girl where…" Then the car radio turned on full blast.

Then the car radio blared on full blast, loud enough _with insane static to vibrate the whole damned vehicle. _Mixed in with that crazy-loud noise was burbling gibberish of distorted voices screaming in lost languages, languages that don't exist and languages that probably won't exist for another few hundred-thousand years. It would be great grist for a linguist's work provided that the expert didn't end up with shattered and bleeding eardrums before hearing too much.

When it stopped, Jimmy's ears weren't too good for a while. Only when he could hear again did he look to the woman. The insides of his ears still rang like bells, yet his hearing was still serviceable provided that a person _spoke up a little. _

Somehow, the dead woman's sweet voice carried through his temporary hearing loss. "Oh, poor baby… They won't let me tell you everything. It's against the rules. We were even playing some funny games with the rules with you just being here."

A look out at the dark scenery outside of this car, and Jimmy wanted to ask where _here _was. Weak headlights barely illuminated the area in front of this vehicle to show the highway surface they went over. Meanwhile, nothing else seemed visible outside—unless he gave a prolonged stare. Putting his head close up against the car window-glass, he thought he saw some distant gridworks of dim lights—dimly lit dark-metal machine-buildings off in the distance. Closer still, every so often, this car zipped by rusted-out wrecks. It didn't even take a glimpse to know some of that wreckage came from kinds of vehicles he had never seen before. Jimmy had the creeping suspicion that not all of those vehicles were intended to be used or driven by human beings. And maybe, not all of those vehicles were as abandoned as previously thought. Maybe some of the things out there, stranded in this nowhere place, were _hungry_ or _angry _and did not care if the biochemistry of their digestive systems would maybe or maybe not tolerate human flesh. To add more some more _maybes _to the mix, it could also be true that some of those things lived here and didn't take too kindly to strangers from other places. To think that Jimmy had the crazy idea of throwing himself out of this car before. It really _was _a crazy idea.

The dead woman turned her head to look at Jimmy for the second time during this conversation—once more showing the ruined half of her head alongside the untouched half. Then the dead woman moved her right hand from the steering wheel to toe top of Jimmy's head, holding his head in place.

"Don't be scared, Jimmy-darling. We're moving too fast for any of those outside to catch us. Most of them are just sick from being somewhere they don't belong, that's all. Are you afraid of things that are sick? You'll be sick like them too soon, so you have to be strong and get used to it." Her right hand tightened its grip on the top of Jimmy's head, felt through his hair and gripping _harder. _"Get…used to it_._"

"_What are you doing!_" shouted Jimmy. He grabbed the cold, hard wrist of the hand that was gripping into the top of his skull.

With all of this talk of skulls and head-bashing, let it be known that a human skull is supposed to be some of the hardest bone-work in a human body. A soft head wouldn't be of much protection to a person's think-works. Yet even that anatomical toughness of Jimmy's head did not seem to be much protection against the inhuman strength of the dead woman's fingers. Pulling and struggling, he could feel the individual fingertips beginning to make an impression. Essentially, it was a pretty damned strong grip for a dead lady—seeing as how dead people aren't supposed to be so lively in the first place. That random thought made Jimmy give a giggle even while it was feeling as if he was about to have five fingerholes poked into his brain-bowl pretty soon. Feeling…_kind of woozy. _

_Be ready, said the dead woman. It was true that the dead woman was not allowed to tell him everything. Not in words, at least. The rules did not exclude other ways of getting the idea across. He saw…darkened glimpses into strange places, those places infested with grotesque creatures. Some of those things were either once human or had human ancestry, no longer. Of course, none of them were that way any damned more. Human or not, they still had pieces of maddened thoughts—their minds distorted and unintelligible. Maybe if one of them had kept enough mind and sanity to tell secrets, maybe something could be different somehow. _


	8. Chapter 8

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 8

…

1.

…

The two girls were dropped off in front of the apartment building. Standing in the light of a streetlamp, Heather waved as the young detective's car drove off into the city night. Intemelessy was standing at her side and not waving. Some would consider that a tad bit rude. Intemelessy would counter by saying that it was being efficient. There is no point in two people waving…if a robot in the shape of a human could be counted as a person. "And that's it for him," said Heather, turning to look at Intemelessy.

The pale-skinned synthetic girl in shorts and tight-gray top was turned around--standing with her back to Heather, her figure too perfect to be human. The blade-sheath across the small of her back gave off a steady blood-colored glow, a contrast to the girl's long dark hair almost blending with the night, hip-holstered dark pistols like metal shadows.

Heather put hands on hips, seeing the kinds of problems that could happen with Intemelessy around in public. While the rest of Intemelessy would no doubt be an acceptable sight (especially to male eyes, and _especially_ in that leg-baring outfit of hers), this new girl's other-worldly weaponry would get the wrong kind of attention…

The wrong kind of attention from _law enforcement, _that is. Firearms ownership laws are very slack in this state. It's no problem for anyone to go down to the local post office, fill out the right forms, and send in the firearms permit request—with a money order to cover the small fee. Yet Heather suspected that were probably no legal provisions for the ownership of nuclear-powered hand-held weaponry. As for that freaky knife sheathed horizontally across Intemelessy's back, the thing looked more like a small _sword _rather than something used to carve wood or stick pigs with. The fact that it gave off a _glow _was also a problem.

First things first. "Hey, we've gotta get you inside. Let's go before the fuzz shows up." Said Heather, gesturing ahead to the front entrance of the apartment building. "If some cop comes by, he might think you're up to no good. You being dressed for apocalyptic combat and all."

"Affirmative," said Intemelessy, her slight other-worldly accent making the _v _sound more like _f. _The synthetic girl then strode quickly toward the front entrance. Heather followed quickly behind. They were able to enter the apartment building without incident. No news is good news, as the old saying goes.

…

Speaking of news, or at least of messengers, guess who was waiting at Heather's apartment? Yup, there he was, leaning up against the wall next to Heather's front door—looking like somebody who belonged here. "Mel…?" went Heather, her voice all full of suspicion. "Since when did you get here?"

The well-dressed young man smiled. "Hello to you, too. I'd answer that with a quote from _Dracula, _but that would be… Forget about it. Aren't you going to invite me in?"

"Can't come in unless you're invited, huh?" responded Heather. "That's probably part of the crappy movies they made from _Dracula, _not the book. Then again, if you were a vampire, you'd probably be more thirsty than helpful."

"Nah, you wouldn't have to worry about those bloodsuckers getting you," said Mel. "They'd probably be the first to run away at the sight of what you have flowing in your veins."

"Gee, thanks," smirked Heather, her voice full of sarcasm. The girl dipped fingers into her right jeans-pocket to get the apartment key. A sound of mechanical workings, and the door was unlocked. Heather then looked at the doorknob and made it turn, also making the door open by itself. If there were neighbors around, they probably wouldn't believe what they were seeing. "Come on in."

…

A click of a light-switch, the glow of the electric lamp, and the little apartment's living room looked quite welcoming—the familiar two armchairs and a sofa around the coffee table, the bookshelf in its corner. The armchair nearest the television was turned away from it because Heather didn't watch television anyway, somewhat because the thing was busted.

That television was there when Heather's father was killed, and the girl never bothered to get another one—didn't want another one. The same is true for that armchair in front of it.

"Have a seat," said Heather to her two guests. "Just don't sit in _that _armchair. Can I get you something to drink…Mel?" Heather glanced at Intemelessy. (What do you offer a robot-girl to drink, anyway? Antifreeze?) "I've got lots of juice, and it's not like I've got crowds of people coming here too often."

"Nothing for me, thanks," said Mel as Heather went over to the kitchenette. Hands in pockets, Mel moved to stand at the center of the living room, looked around. "You know… With all the loads of money you've earned, it's a wonder you haven't lined the walls with paintings." He suddenly looked wide-eyed at the bookcase. "Wow! Are those _first-run editions _of your father's works?"

"Wait a sec," said Heather, walking back in here with a tall pitcher of apple juice and a stack of plastic cups, putting them on the coffee table. The girl then sat herself in the armchair forbidden to everyone else. Said to Mel, "Yup. Those are worth more than this whole apartment building if I ever wanted to sell them to the right people. If some old guys can slap some dried gunk onto cloth and call them paintings to make a few million bucks, why not the same deal with words on paper?"

Mel brought a hand close to the rows of very coveted books on the bookshelf as if feeling some mystical aura of literary awesomeness from them. First-run editions of books by _Harry Mason_. He then pulled back. "Can't forget why I dropped by to visit," he said—speaking more to himself than Heather. He went over to the sofa and sat on the right side.

Intemelessy also sat down—her back stiffly poised, her perfect knees together. A cyborg Army drill instructor would have approved.

_Jeez-please, _thought Heather. _Makes me feel uncomfortable just from _looking _at her. _"Would you _relax!_ You're making me uptight just from looking at you. We're not rushing off to fight World War Three any time soon, so just…_chill out _and stuff."

"Could you relax in trying to get her to relax?" went Mel. "_Taking it easy _is not in her programming. That's what happens when you're made to fight forever."

"Yeah… Hey, what _about _that?" asked Heather, leaning forward. "I've seen and heard of a lot of weird stuff coming out of that town. You're probably the first thing I've met from there that doesn't want to kill everyone in sight. Even better, you're beautiful instead of mutated. So what's your story?"

Intemelessy began. "As stated, I was designed for warfare purposes. I am a synth-type gynoid designed with enhanced energy allocation systems, augmented mobility systems and tactical multi-processing, made robust with auto-repair capabilities.

"Standard combat models are usually of the metal-type for enhanced durability with negative consequences to mobility. The founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Thunderhorse Corporation personally supervised the design and manufacturing personnel that worked for my creation as a beta prototype. Due to a metaphysical incursion, they were unable to produce further models."

"Whoa, hey… Slow down," said Heather. "I think I caught most of what you said. You're some kinda fighting machine…like out of that movie. But what's up with the word _metaphysical? _Is that what you call problems from the…other world?"

Mel chimed in. "Intemelessy, tell Heather about where you came from. We're not the only ones who had to deal with problems from that other place."

Intemelessy did so. Though with no more humanity than something on sale from an electronics store, the synthetic girl managed to tell her story tolerably enough. It went like this.

…

2.

…

In the depths of the sleek laboratory, the labcoat-wearing technicians could hear the wail of sirens off in the distance—hearing the sirens through the thick white walls and above the thrum of the air filtration system. The gas masks they had strapped over their faces left their ears free to hear the sounds and potentially hear what others had to say, though no one had anything they wanted to express in words anymore. All of their plans and goodbyes to each other were said earlier. They knew what was happening, and they knew what they had to do. Now they were working as a team in doing this last thing. Lifetimes of work, and it was all going to be lost to whatever _the Hell _was going on.

The CEO of the Thunderhorse Corporation told them that this day would come. He hired these technicians straight out of the university exactly for this purpose. Since his corporation owned the school and forgave tuition if they worked for him, it didn't take a rocket scientist (or computer scientist, in this case) to figure out that career choice.

Of course, being the hard-headed scientists they were, they thought that the CEO was just barely on this side of sanity when he spoke of _other worlds _and _invasion, _along with talk of _holes in reality._ Creatures from another dimension, you say? Strange fogs that herald in doomsday for the world? _Ri-i-i-i-ight… _

They went along with that crazy talk because he was paying their salaries…and paying for their facilities…and materials…all within buildings that he owned. These scientists know what's up. They knew to give the behind-the-back wink and nod to each other whenever they heard the muscular CEO in black business suit tell them things like that. Rich people can afford to be as crazy as they want. And since rich people can afford anything….

But his warnings didn't seem so crazy _now_, did they? The corporate personnel knew before everyone else that a strange fog was rolling into the city—strange banks of mist visible from weather satellites in space…before satellite communications started to get messed up. Messed up, but not cut off. Since the corporation also owned the news services, they sent computerized messages to all the people.

Now what? Go hide, damn it. Go inside apartments. Lock the doors. Turn off all air conditioning. Put masking tape over all possible ways for air to get into one's apartment. Then strap on gas masks and pray to Heaven and Hell that it's enough. Yes indeed, the City of Nebraska was in trouble now. The fog…

As to what was going on, leave it to scientists to come up with last-minute explanations of things that they didn't even believe in before. _Last minute _is right because there were just _minutes _between when the fog wafted its way over the sleek glass-and-concrete buildings of the city, coating those streets, while people in them shouted over computerized video-links about what was happening—before things happened to them. Fog rolls in over places. People start screaming as electrical interference cuts into their conversation. Then the lights go out amidst screams and agony—talking about the _walls changing _and _everything getting dark _along with nonsense about _monsters _and _people disappearing. _

Oh yes, about those last-minute explanations… Perhaps a chemical within the fog itself induces _hallucinations?_ Hence, people spoke of _monsters _and _demons. _Certain airborne neurotoxincan cause changes within human nervous systems as well as components of building materials. Then again, they would have to be chemicals that made electronics hallucinate too…because some security cameras began showing things—glimpses of impossible things in the fog that are not supposed to exist.

All of this is just a fancy-ass way of saying that the fog is making people see things. Mix the right kind of chemical stew, put it in the air, and you can make people see leprechauns dancing with little gray space aliens if you want… Sure, and the same stuff will make people see pots of gold and flying saucers to boot. Crazy talk, that's what it is. Crazy as that mystical CEO…

Again, not crazy. The fog itself was not the cause of the problem. Rather, it was a symptom. Don't blame the fever. Blame the disease. It was a kind of disease invading reality—something cancerous and destructive.

Funny how everyone was seeing the same thing too, also funny how _all _the cities of the world were suddenly getting the same apocalyptic problem. It was not just the City of Nebraska. All the major cities on this land mass were overtaken, as were the rest of them. People didn't go by names of countries and provinces in because the governments of this world went bankrupt over a hundred years ago. Corporations run the world… Or they _used _to run it—because the fog was taking over. Oddly or not oddly enough, depending on what one believed about the Thunderhorse Corporation, the City of Nebraska was the last city to go.

All of this was just background to what the technicians were doing. That fog was going to get here eventually—probably within the next hour. Wind patterns be damned, the fog could just waft through that too. Again, the source of the fog was the threat, not the fog itself. The fog had already overtaken much of the city, coming from the outside on in. It was just a matter of time.

The sirens sounded a lot closer this time, heard quite well through the thick and hardened walls of this building and laboratory, loud enough to be heard over the sound of humming computer hardware and air filtration systems. All the technicians, men and women seemingly androgynous with slender bodies draped by long white lab-coats and faces hidden behind black gas-masks, their looks of fright and worry were well-hidden when the lights went _flick-flicker. _

One of the scientists ran to yank a heavy lever. Those levers were mechanically connected to big metal valves inside of the air filtration system. Now all air coming from the outside was cut off, the air of this laboratory being filtered and recycled from within. Technically, the system could run for hundreds of years to reprocess carbon dioxide and airborne toxins into breathable air—using the advanced technology of their world. Not so technically, the fog had ways of eventually getting into places, eating through metal by making it rapidly age in seconds—almost as of aspects of the fog were …_time warps _or something.

The technicians nevertheless rushed on with their work. In truth, they completed the last of their tasks weeks ago, culminating in months of effort. They could just as easily have activated their final product yesterday or the day before. Yet they took their time to make the product the best thing possible. This was their last gift to humanity, a last hope for the world—for all the worlds. If this product of their work was their last will and testament, they were going to make it a real hum-dinger, damn it.

_Flick-flicker. _The primary lights went out, blood-colored emergency lights coming on. In that low red light, people began screaming. Then they started dying as the fog ate through the filters on their gas-masks. That fog wasn't stopping for anything—not stopped by filters powered by microscopic robots, not stopped by metal valves, and sure as Hell not stopped by some little semi-permeable discs set in synthetic rubber face-masks.

If the technicians could have figured out a way to survive just one day in the fog while the worst of the chemicals in it became equalized when exposed to the air of this world, then they maybe could have lived. And if they were good enough with weapons, they could perhaps have lived a few days beyond that as the creatures from the fog started taking over. All of those _maybes _put together weren't worth a fart in the wind because not a single one of the technicians survived…even if their final product did.

…

The grime-covered glass case slid open. This revealed the synthetic girl lying down—her eyes opening to see the laboratory, steeped in blood-colored light. Unlike human beings, a robot can be born knowing everything necessary. And if her emerging from the case counts for being born, then Intemelessy was born fully informed, fully clothed and—more importantly—fully equipped with weaponry.

Intemelessy wasn't programmed to have fear or sadness. No fear came from seeing the dried corpses of dead scientists, all of their skins browned and looking darkish in the blood-colored light, even while their labcoats remained clean and pristine. Be a person a Nordic pale or deepest sub-Saharan blue-black in complexion, everybody ends up being the same color when made crispy dead by the worst of whatever was in the fog. (The Grim Reaper is an equal opportunity harvester.) Likewise, no sadness came from seeing her creators dead as meat-jerky, their bodies fallen wherever they were. Intemelessy simply took in the data that the threat had contaminated, infested and eliminated all human life within the building. Therefore, Intemelessy had no problem with _sanitizing _the threats which stood up from the floor and began shambling in her direction.

Those mummified corpses on the floor weren't going to take Intemelessy's presence lying down. Not at all. With a crackling of semi-dried muscle-meat and a mighty twitch of torso, one of the dead bodies in lab-coats jerked to its feet, standing up all by itself. While its legs were straight, its back was then bowed forward with terrible posture. This was as so the lump creature controlling the dead body could see ahead.

Then another corpse lurched to its feet, then another… Oh Hell, all the corpses got up to join the fun. And they all had the same setup too. Dead as they were supposed to be, all of the bodies had creatures attached to the spinal cords—riding and controlling those bodies like grotesque cowboys. Giddyup…

Intemelessy hesitated—not because the synthetic girl was _scared _but because her computer-mind was analyzing the nature of the threat. Her eyesight switched between multiple modes—able to see things that ordinary human sight could not. Some of those forms of eyesight showed heat signatures of things that were not really here and standing by to cause some trouble—things that would be called ghosts in some cultures.

Five corpses of dead scientists began to close in. No way was their lack of vital signs going to keep them from joining this little undead reunion. Intemelessy was the hottest-looking thing here, too. So the synthetic girl just _had _to be the life of the party—if being a robot counts for being alive. Hey, baby... Come here often? We'll make you _come_, alright.

Her computer mind then completed processing a deadly tactical plan of action. Look out monsters, it's time for fun. Intemelessy is out, so they had better run. It's _party time._

Intemelessy's right hand moved blur-fast, a bright red flash in the shape of a semi-circle. There was not just the flash of her iridescent crimson blade, there was also the sound to go with it—sounding as if cutting the molecules air itself.

All the corpses standing within nine feet of her collapsed to the floor. It's pretty hard to stand up when one's body is cut clean through the waist. So when the bodies fell, _they fell in halves_. So much for this party being standing room only—because now the parasite-controlled corpses didn't have a leg to stand on.

Another blur-quick movement. The synthetic girl sheathed the blade and had switched to her ranged weapons at the same time—thumbing switches on her nuclear-powered pistols as so they would blast the creatures instead of blasting through the walls. There was no need to do that, at least not yet.

Both of Intemelessy's pistols now went to work—bright blue flashes and bursts of sound. Each of her shots obliterated several corpses at once along with the parasitic lumps upon the backs. And since Intemelessy's weapons tapped into infinite energies from outside of this universe, there was the potential for her shooting as long as her pistols didn't overheat.

Intemelessy kept blasting. The nearest arm-crawling, legless torsos on the floor were the first to go. Then came the ones that were along the edges of the laboratory and walking up close to cause trouble—not getting close. A person would be tempted to say something about nobody leaving this room alive. That's a moot point, though, since none of the scientists were alive any damned more.

By the time Intemelessy was done, so was the whole room. All the corpses were largely reduced to darkened ash. Maybe there were a few mismatched arms left over, along with some clumps of flesh or the occasional shoe still with a disembodied foot in it, but not a single corpse was left intact enough for any of the lump-creatures to control.

Intemelessy fired both pistols to melt herself a hole in the laboratory doors. The metal double-doors of the laboratory were designed to withstand a nuclear explosion, yet they were not designed to withstand nuclear _shots._ This brought her to the basement of the corporate building—a place with blood-colored emergency lights still working and showing once-gleaming metal walls having become covered with rust. This entire building was taken over by _them. _No problem, Intemelessy was going to take the whole thing back before moving on.

…

What happened next was a fairly repetitive business. Intemelessy went from room to infested room on the first floor of the corporate building, blasting anything and everything that looked as if it could be a threat to any humans left alive. When one floor was cleared, the synthetic girl went to the next floor and did the same.

These creatures were not just the corpses with lump-creatures on their backs. Hells no, these things came in all kinds of shapes, sizes, colors and flavors. Some of the things encountered looked like dogs with lobster-like shell-work instead of fur and more than four legs. Some of the creatures had ball-shaped bodies and got around by floating—dripping acidic slime as they digested chemicals in the air and giving off poison as a byproduct. Then there were the freaks that disagreed with the idea of gravity pulling toward the center of a planet. Those bastards were walking along the ceiling with three legs ending in sticky-padded feet, their mouths on the bottoms of their slimy bodies. Of course, this went alongside the kinds of things that looked human enough to walk on two legs…and that was just about the only characteristic that they shared with _homo sapiens_.

Floating, shambling, crawling, creeping, snarling, it didn't matter. They were all vulnerable to the controlled nuclear shots of Intemelessy's dual pistols. They could make all the noises they want, doing what they could, but there was no way they were able to even get close to her, let alone do any sort of damage. Centuries of technology went into making the synthetic girl the best human-sized fighting machine in existence, and those twisted freaks could only fight on accident. It was no fight at all and more like a noob-slaughter as _Intemelessy blasted them all. _

With all floors of this building cleared of unholy creatures from lord-knows-where, the synthetic girl returned to the basement—going down the nineteen flights of steps. Something like an elevator had been put in place, a contraption of thick-rusted metal and grinding electromechanical parts, yet Intemelessy's machine-mind did not trust it. It would be the basement because that was the preferred place of entry of creatures into this world.

When the creatures entered this reality, they left the way open for the way out—having violated the very fabric of time and space. Doing this left infected holes in reality the same way that holes in flesh can leave festering sores. Like perforations in flesh, they don't close properly.

This also left the ways open for twisted freaks from outside to come in.

Using one of her many modes of electronic sight, Intemelessy located one such hole in reality—a rippling hole that was not just a hole in the wall, set close to the machines that supplied emergency energy to the building. It was in that way which Intemelessy moved on from her dead world, moving on to fulfill her programmed mission of fighting the twisted invaders from somewhere else, trying to defend all the other worlds that were not broken—even if the fight took her to places that were between the universes, places that were technically _nowhere_. And it was in one of those nowhere places that Heather met Intemelessy.

…

Sitting here and now, Heather was listening to this—her legs and arms crossed, not having touched her apple juice since Intemelessy began. "Your delivery is pretty cut and dry," said Heather, "but that's one tall tale you're telling me." A shrug. "Sounds kinda on the unbelievable side, though. I dunno… Stranger things have happened."

Said Mel, "But do you hear her? Intemelessy came from a whole universe away just to help _you_ out. It seems like you're not the only one having to deal with _them._ So, is it an agreement?"

"Is whatan agreement?" went Heather. "What, you want me to prick my finger and sign something in blood? Won't do it, 'cause that's just gross. And I'm not too keen on signing stuff my dad's lawyers and agents don't get to look at first. They're control freaks like that sometimes."

Mel shook his head. "Playing dense, huh? I mean, will you _agree to let Intemelessy be your bodyguard?_"

Heather's looks darkened, her eyes seeming shaded. "I can take care of myself. Any time something nasty comes around, help is just a thought away."

"And so are the temporary costs you have to pay for that help, summoning the unseen servants," countered Mel. "Look… You've already had a visit from something big and ugly, so they know where you live. But that was just one of them. What'll you do if you have to deal with more than a few of them at once? What if a dozen and a half of those things came out of nowhere?" He smiled craftily. "Come on… Wouldn't you like having her around? Some low-maintenance company would be just the thing for your loneliness."

"Perv!" shouted Heather…before relenting. "Okay, _fine. _Intemelessy, you're in. But as soon as we figure out how to stop this craziness, we're going our separate ways. Deal?"

"It is agreed," stated Intemelessy. "We are therefore a party united for the purpose of eliminating the threat in this world."

"We're a party, huh? What is this, the _Lord of The Rings _books?" quipped Heather. "I'll admit to being short, but no way is anybody gonna compare me to being the hobbit in this deal."


	9. Chapter 9

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 9

…

1.

…

Strange as it may seem, John Wright was still on the job. You know, John Wright—the newbie prison-guard we first met at the beginning of this tale? (He was the one getting the big fat speech from the big-fat warden.) Yes, it's _that _John Wright—the new prison guard.

Since John Wright was still considered a freshly minted prison guard, _completely _lacking in any sort of seniority, he was one of those stuck with many of the crap duties—like being on night duty, what they call the _graveyard _shift. (Ooh, scary…) It was dark when he signed in, and it would be dark when he signed back out.

At the moment, Wright was traversing the dimly lit concrete walkways among the upper tiers of this prison wing, his stride as brisk as his pressed uniform, pistol at his right hip and radio mounted on the right shoulder. The thick rubber soles of his dark shoes made no sound as he walked the hard flooring, and his radio was very quiet save for a low hiss of what could be ordinary background noise of the electromagnetic sort. On the other hand, the static could be from another kind of interference altogether—such as the sort of interference from the odd prisoner's activities.

Never mind that for now. Why was there the physical presence of a prison guard walking this entire tier of one-hundred and eighty inmates? Why did there have to be a human being walking around? A person would think that in an age of spy satellites and see-in-the-dark electronics that it would be easier, faster, and more efficient to just stick cameras everywhere and be done with it. In fact, that was the way things usually worked in most state prisons. Cameras are cheaper than people, and cheap is good as questionably understood by the cheap bastards who run the state government. Cheaper prisons make for more tax cuts, and _all _the politicians love tax cuts.

So…why have a person here instead of the usual camera? Remember, we are dealing with the odd prisoner. Doing the usual just won't do sometimes.

Truth is, video cameras sometimes won't work in this part of the prison sometimes. Why not, since the lights won't always cooperate either. Still true is how someone, somehow, has to see what goes on this part of the prison. And if it takes a pair of human eyeballs (still attached to a living human being of course) going up to the third tier to look around, so be it. A set of ears would help too, as would a hand or two to handle firearms in case things were going to Hell.

Wright's eyes and ears were taking in what little there was to see and hear. Though there was some light to see by from the dimmed overhead lights, the prison cells themselves were steeped in near darkness—showing the darkened shapes of inmates in bunks. He heard a few of them sobbing in their bunks, and one guy was on the toilet (taking a dump in the dark from the sounds of it), but that was about it.

Yes, that's it. Nothing much was happening. Nothing much happened for a good long while. Even though Wright was getting this really nagging feeling that _something _was wrong, nothing was happening. So it was maybe a big loud relief when his radio's speaker burst into life.

"_Wright, this is Albo,_" hissed the communications radio mounted on his right shoulder. "_Animal attack in…_" _Hsst!_ "_Central yard. Get down here fast…!_" _Bzzt!_

"Wright to Albo, roger that_,_" said Wright, turning himself around and running for the stairwell down. The set procedure in this moment was to follow orders. His superior told him to get to the central yard in a hurry, and he would do exactly that—moving fast as someone who took enough steroids to supply a whole baseball team.

When someone is running, that person is not really thinking. Wright was running, so he was not really thinking. That means, he was _not _thinking about why his radio was suddenly making _so much noise _as he came closer to the bottom floor. It wasn't a radio malfunction, because he did a function-check on it when he signed in—doing the same for his pistol. He was also _not _thinking about _how the Hell _any sort of dangerous animal managed to get into the prison-yard, what this was all about.

Hold on. This is important. The only way that an animal is getting over two sets of eighteen-foot walls—walls topped with razor wire—is by using wings, damn it. Prison inmates can be called jailbirds, but they can't really fly. There are abso-forking-loutely _no _dangerous animals with wings anymore—unless a portal in the time-space continuum opened up and brings in some mutated flying dinosaurs from an alternate reality to raise some havoc. Such are reasonable expectations.

However, ladies and gentlemen, there are times and places in which we have passed far…_far _beyond reasonable expectations. When dealing with business about and around that crazy town of legend, things can get particularly screwy. It is very reasonable to consider things that are unreasonable.

…

Our prison guard made it out into the night. Out here, big dark sky above, the central yard was the size of a football field (albeit one with tall walls and guard towers). Big circles of light shone down from the towers, blazing down like stage-lamps to illuminate the so-called _animals. _Animals? The Hell they were.

John had the visual impression of stick-legged figures, vaguely human in form. They had on tattered red toga-robes that covered them from the tops of their heads to about mid-calf. It was hard to tell if they had arms or not because the tattered robes had no sleeves, nor did any sort of head poke out from the top. But he did see legs—skinny shanks of pale flesh covered with dark sores. Three legs… Each of those figures had _three legs._ And then he noticed something else wrong… The gaps in their robes revealed writhing masses of short tentacles.

Now, he was seeing it. It was just that his mind wasn't _believing _it. Seeing is _not _believing, because there are times when a person has a hard time dealing with complete craziness that isn't supposed to exist or happen. Between the raw images fed by human eyeballs to the intense think-meat of the brain, there has to be some kind of answer. It was just that this answer wasn't coming too fast.

When Wright was a little boy, he was in the woods one day and came across a very sick deer. The animal had a severe case of worms. These are not the happy-go-lucky slimy things that one picks out of the ground and uses for bait when fishing. Oh, gosh no… These worms were _parasitic—_nasty things that grow inside of living animals and sop up nutrients. The deer that little John-boy saw was so heavily infested with parasitic worms that whole patches of the poor creature's body were absolutely writhing with them, open sores all full of infection. What could the deer do, call for a doctor's appointment? Deer can't use telephones. Their hooves can't press those small buttons. Then there's the whole not-able-to-speak problem. John remembered running off to tell his father. Somehow, the animal was still around when John's father came around…with a rifle. He put the animal out of its misery. _Darnedest thing I ever saw, _said his father later to animal control people later.

Now _this _was the darnedest thing that John-boy Wright was seeing as a full-grown man—three-legged things that walked on three human-like legs but just weren't human otherwise. They weren't animals, either. Animals don't wear togas. And animals aren't supposed to have three legs. Two legs are okay. Four legs are fine. Any more legs than that, and they have to come in pairs. For an odd number like _three, _that makes no damned sense. Neither did the writhing masses of tentacles hidden by the raggedy cloth.

"Wright! New kid!" shouted somebody standing close to this entranceway. "Wake up! Get the fork over here!"

Training-bred obedience took over, and he snapped out of his shocked reverie. "Yes, sir! Moving, sir!" was his shout—moving over to the prison guard who called for him.

"Hey, Wright… See those ugly bastards?" said this other prison guard. "Things like _that _aren't supposed to exist. Take a good long look too, because after we blast them and burn their unholy corpses, it'll be like they never existed at all." The hand on his shoulder griped hard. "_They do not exist. Do you understand?_"

"Yes sir, I understand," said Wright, that training still strong. The state trains its prison guards in almost the same way it trains its state troopers. In fact, prison guards and state police train in the same set of massive facilities—those far-off facilities right next door to where the local Army National Guard does some of its own operations. Prison guards are not soldiers, yet they are damned well close. "I understand. They do not exist."

"Outstanding," said the other prison guard. "Take this shotgun." Wright accepted the dark-metal weapon. "Now join up with that squad and eliminate the threat."

"Yes sir!" exclaimed Wright, running over to comply. He joined up with the indicated group, seven other guards with one of them in charge.

They wasted no time in getting the job done—shotguns booming. Rifles go _crack. _Pistols go _pop._ (In all the movies and the stupid television shows, they make firearms sound like field artillery—which sucks for realism.) But when a _shotgun _speaks, there's no mistaking it for any other kind of weapon. And these shotguns were not loaded with typical ammo either. Hells no, these guards had slugs loaded into their twelve-gauge weapons, thick rounds big enough to punch holes in bears and elephants—even strong enough to put a hole through a car door.

Those creatures in tattered red togas were not bruins, pachyderms, or small passenger vehicles, but the shotgun slugs killed them all the same. The six creatures were ripped to shreds in seconds. One could barely hear their strange squeals over the noise of the blasts, so much loud blasting going on. Still, all that one needed to know was that the solid-slug rounds punched clear-through the creatures' tattered robes and grotesque scarred flesh beneath. Gobbets of flesh and dark spatters of oily life-fluid sprayed out and away. Some of the blasted chunks had bits of wriggling tentacles attached, tentacles which weakly squirmed before going still and quickly melting.

"_Cease fire! Cease fire! They're down!_" came the shouted command. Shotguns stopped firing. Things became much quieter. "Now comes the fun part. Make sure those ugly bastards are _dead_. Y'all know what to do."

Wright matched the stride of his fellow guards as they approached the fallen things illuminated by the spotlight. Courage and training kept him from being scared witless as he came closer. Having a weapon of massive power also helped. And before he knew it, there he was.

The toga-clad, three-legged things were even nastier up close. Having been blasted by a few-dozen rounds did not help their looks either. Splayed triple-sets of diseased legs extended out from the bottoms of tattered togas. Gaps in the ragged clothes showed dark holes in gray flesh. Their patches of tentacles were dark and disgusting. Thank goodness those things wore any sorts of clothes, at least—covering their nastiness. Otherwise…

One of the creatures let out a loud squeal, a sound which was cut off with a _splunch _as someone stomped its torso. Dark gobs of gunk spattering the pavement. "If it's not dead, stomp it instead," recited that other prison guard, looking to Wright. "They might not go down easy, but a good whack while they're down usually does the job."

_They? _What are _they, _these things? That failed to matter, because _they do not exist. _ Wright just nodded in agreement with his fellow prison guard. "A good stomp," agreed Wright.

A pickup truck motored over to here and backed up—the vehicle's payload bed covered with plastic. Wright helped pile the creatures' bodies onto the back of the truck, thinking this to be one of the oddest moments in his life. _They do not exist, _he thought.

"You're with me, Wright," said another prison guard, grim-faced. "Since you're new, there's something you have to see. Get into the pickup."

Having already seen wonders enough to last him several lifetimes, Wright could not imagine what could possibly come next. He climbed up into the pickup truck's cab section, squeezing into one of the small rear passenger seats. This truck was one of those massive, gas-guzzling behemoths manufactured by the millions. But for all of its size, despite this truck looking big enough to carry a small car in its, the cab section's two rear passenger seats had next to no leg-room for a tall person. Prison guards are tall people too.

With everyone physically adjusted as best as possible, they got moving. Wright heard and felt this truck beginning to move—the rumbling engine powering this truck through the night-time prison-yard and through open armored gates.

Wright didn't see who was driving yet recognized him from his voice. It was Pullahein, another one of his superiors. Yup, _everybody _here outranks the new guy. Almost everyone could be counted as being among his superiors.

Said Pullahein, "Wright, just like we done said, we're goin' ta show ya somethin'. We're goin' to th' _incinerator_. Now, I'm gonna ask ya ta keep some things in mind. Some of the stuff that happens at the incinerator will be all in yer head. Lemme say that again. _All in yer head. _An' if ya start askin' questions, I'm gonna say it's the wind or maybe somethin' ya done ate a-fore it done been cooked properly. Red meat an' all. Gosh knows what kinda hormones are in that stuff y'all eat. Ya know how they allow a certain amount a' bugs an' chemical crap in that food? Maybe some of that went down the wrong chemical channels in yer digestive tract and done made it to yer think-meat, makin' ya _hear _things."

Now if Pullahein had just said something like _don't worry about it kid _or _nothin' to worry about, _Wright would not have worried. _Don't worry about it. Nothing to worry about. _Those are disposable words used too easily and too often—used when things go as usual. This maybe wasn't going to be the usual. Those things were not the usual, the dead creatures piled in the back of the very same vehicle he was riding in.

This truck turned off onto a short road still on prison grounds. "Up and at 'em!" said Pullahein. "Let's give this-here barbecue a beginnin'."

Wright got out of the truck and saw the place. Illuminated with huge electrical outdoor lighting, the big building which housed the incinerator was set next door to the penitentiary's electrical power-house—two huge industrial structures that dealt with a lot of energy at once. Big men in blue mechanic's coveralls came out of the incinerator building to help, bringing the biggest wheelbarrows that Wright had ever seen before. "More nightmare fuel, eh?" asked one of them.

_Nightmare fuel…_ As if Wright wasn't just a little bit shaken enough about the big mystery. It was weird and bad enough they were already burning up dead things that would probably make some money if photographed or sent to some science lab. And yet more strangeness was on the way.

"Come on, Wright," said Pullahein, himself pushing one of those strangely large-bodied wheelbarrows heaped with even stranger corpses. "What're ya waitin' fer? Expectin' these things ta get up an' give ya an' invitation? They ain't gonna move themselves. An' if they do, we're gonna hafta shoot 'em some more."

…

While it was night outside, sky above and darkly forested around, the inside of this building was brightly lit with all the lights on—brighter than daylight. Everything in here was hard and rectangular, illuminated with the kinds of florescent lights used in factories. There was room enough to move the wheelbarrows and their strange loads past the front counter and down the hall toward the rear. The rear of this building was where there was this place's main attraction.

To Wright, the incinerator itself looked like an armored cylinder about the size of the truck. It was taller than him and someone standing on his shoulders. But he wouldn't dare do any sort of stunts like that, having people on his shoulders or anything, because that incinerator was _hot. _He wasn't even close to it, and he could feel the blazing heat coming from the thing's metal. Take a wrong tumble too close to that big thing, and a dude is cooked unless wearing asbestos suits. Two such mechanics in such clothes were actually here—in getups like teddy bears costume-players in coveralls. No one had to get close to the incinerator because a long powered conveyor belt did the carrying.

Pullahein pointed to a strip of reflective tape on the ceramic floor. "See that blue strip? Get yerself back ta _there_," he said to Wright.

Wright did so, standing behind the strip of blue tape on the ceramic-plate floor—a floor of ceramic plates because ordinary concrete might not fare too well if the fire from the incinerator was to get out of control. From here, Wright watched as Pullahein yanked down on a huge metal lever, revealing the big hot circular opening to the fiery incinerator's insides. Somehow, Pullahein wasn't affected by the heat even though the two mechanics in thick asbestos coveralls seemed to need them on.

A wave of hotness and a dull glow came from the open incinerator—the bright-hot whitish-yellow of the artificial inferno. Feel it, see it, and he could hear it, hear the rushing roar of the white-hot flames.

Was he hearing some…moaning? It wasn't out-loud and obvious. Maybe he heard some faint screams too. These weren't full-on screams that seemed to come from right here inside of this ceramic-floored room. It was more like they were off in the distance, coming from…_the direction of the furnace. _Were there things…_still alive _in there? He opened his mouth to say something and shut it.

Pullahein saw that hesitation. "Ya 'member what I done said, right? _Hearin' things. _All in yer mind, pro'bly_._"

Though Wright nodded his agreement, he could not help but stare at the roaring flames, listening into them too. As the strange bodies were riding the conveyor belt into there, it was as if the bright-gold incandescent inferno turned just a little bit reddish. Did things just get a little darker in there? He also thought the lights flickered.

Pullahein began speaking. "This-here incinerator is a gas-fueled _dee-vice_ wit' an average burn of 'bout one-thousand eight-hunnert degrees Fahrenheit…or nine-hunnert eighty-two _centigrade_, dependin' on yer local parlance. 'Cordin' ta state regulations, the temp fer dealin' with bio-contaminants ain't but sixteen-hunnert degrees Fahrenheit. But we do what we gotta do in dealin' with this sorta funny business, goin' that extra mile. This case, we're goin' the extra three-hunnert an' sixty-six Kelvin. _Nothin' _gettin' outta that thing intact enough to cause trouble in this world ever again."

"_What?_" asked Wright. He wasn't asking about the distant sounds coming from the burning of the strange corpses, so he wasn't breaking that previous verbal command. "What the Hell are those things?"

"More questions? I thought Albo done told ya that these things don't exist," said Pullahein, smiling. "Not like yer gonna go blabberin' at the local pub 'bout this sorta stuff. Liable ta end up in a funny farm if ya do. Oh yeah, them funny farms are all fulla people willin' ta say that they take UFO rides with Elvis Presley an' sharin' fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches made by nine-eyed Gleeptarians hired to be his personal chefs.

"Anyway… Maybe it sounds a little touched in the head when I say this, but maybe them things ain't from around here. _Maybe _they done fell through a _hole _in reality an' ended up here by some kinda mistake. Them things ain't got the best of walkin' skills if ya noticed, their bodies so messed up from contamination and radiation that they get all twisted when they get born… Messed up _before _they been born.

"Ain't necessarily their fault, all things considered," added Pullahein. "Ain't their fault they ended up lookin' uglier than ninety-year-old Aunt Agatha in a shoe-string bikini. And it ain't their fault fer comin' here. Facts on toppa facts, though, they ended up here. We've gotta get ridda them soon as they do appear, too. They shouldn't exist. So, _they don't _exist. See? _It makes its own kinda sense_."

Wright was not going to question this line of reasoning. He was accepting what Pullahein was telling him, for now. The full depth of what he was being told probably wouldn't sink in until later. Too much was happening at once for him, too much for his mind to sift through and organize. He asked nothing further, staring as the last of the strange bodies in their ragged togas rode the conveyor belt—going into the circular opening of the man-made purifying inferno, distant sounds of distorted howling that was like nothing on this Earth.

…

2.

…

Night passed into day. In the penitentiary structure itself, the mountain-sized fortress-looking place, the inmates had another morning—one which was like almost ever other morning before. After the wake-up in this huge concrete fortress of a place, morning came with very little said between the prison guards about last night—and nothing at all about the same to the inmates. Most of the inmates themselves had slept through the night anyway. In doing so, they had the most amazing nightmares they ever had for a very long time. And at wake-up, everyone here felt that something big had happened last night. They were just a little bit restless. Sure, the inmates were still cooperative and relatively controlled. Still though, the whole feeling of something _big _having happened was a feeling that would not go away.

And it was exactly that which made the warden get his big fat business-suited self up out of his leather office-chair and over to a certain wing of this fine institution of human captivity. Accompanied by no less than five prison guards—all of those uniformed men with shotguns—the warden rode a seldom-used cargo elevator to the third tier of a certain prison wing. Inmates behind bars gave the warden some nasty looks as he passed by and did nothing else. Say or do the wrong thing in the presence of the warden, and there just might be a live firearms demonstration followed by a surprisingly red paint-job.

Three prison guards went a bit ahead, two more a bit behind, and the expensively clad fat man approached this upper-story jail cell alone. It had to be alone in dealing with the odd prisoner. The warden—the boss-man himself—did not want the prison guards seeing or hearing what happened at meetings like this.

The warden is big. He is also very fat. Now a person can add _sweaty _to the list of words used to describe him, because he was getting that feeling he seldom ever did. The warden is one of those big loud wealthy men raised from childhood to be in charge. Like his father before him and his grandfather in turn, going all the way back to the bad old days when his ancestors killed Native American men and raped the women, the warden was from a family of big men of big importance. He was used to being on top of whatever organization he was in, on top of the men who did the work, and on top of whatever woman he was screwing at the time. Given his massive girth, one could quite easily see that he also seemed to be on top of the food chain too.

But…_this _is different. No matter how many times he had to do this, he could never get used to this feeling. He was approaching the cell of the odd prisoner, and he wasn't feeling too good about doing so either. _Good morning, meat._

"_What!_" blurted the warden, whipping himself around and nearly falling over this tier's walkway railing. A person wouldn't have believe that it was possible for such a huge dude to turn that fast. He did, though—turning around whip-fast. Someone had whispered _those words _to him, those frosty words carried on breath like icy wind.

Standing straight again and trying to regain his puffy confidence, the warden saw that his guards looked ready for some kind of action. They were clenching their shotguns, looking at the warden, waiting for the word to shoot something. Instead, the warden made an angry gesture indicating that they should just lower their weapons. Boom-sticks are of no use to things that might not really be there.

He just imagined it, that's all. Or maybe, the indoor air currents of this big place carried some words wrongly. Someone could have actually said, _good time to eat _from elsewhere in this building_. _Yes, that's it. And with those false comforts in mind, he resumed his walk to the cell of the odd prisoner—the front of the prison-cell itself wide open and welcoming as the open door of a professional office with an appointment in place. Except this was no visit to a lawyer or psychiatrist. This was the lair of _him. _

Then there he was. The odd prisoner was sitting in a wooden chair. His head was swaying just a bit—as if he was someone just enjoying the bliss of the moment. Head swaying, he stared into the pattern of symbols written on the wall…

It wasn't just written on the wall. No, it was more like the symbols were written _into _the wall—just beyond the slightly reflective hard lacquer painted into the wall. Those walls and the special lacquer are there to keep people from chipping their way out. But the odd prisoner didn't need to chip the walls to make himself a hole, especially when a hole in reality was even better.

"Warden, I would ask that you cease rubbing your hands together," said the odd prisoner without turning around. "The sound of your sweat-lubricated pathetic flesh can be an irritation. Put your hands at your sides. Stand up straight. What would your mother have said of such slovenly behavior?"

The warden straightened his back, a look of surprise on his face—not necessarily because the odd prisoner told him to do so, more because he was surprised that the odd prisoner knew that the warden was slouching without turning to look. Now he stared in slack-jawed amazement. People can joke about eyes in the back of the head_, _yet that just might not be a joke when dealing with the odd prisoner. And yes, his long-dead mother did have a thing about posture and habits even if nothing was said of her own habits, like her _cocaine _habit. (_Coke, the pause that refreshes_, his mother used to say in echoing soda-pop ads from decades gone by.)

When the odd prisoner stood up to turn around, his chair did the same. That is, the chair turned around too. A cold rush of fear thrilled through the warden when he saw that _nobody touched the chair when it moved like that._ Chairs are not supposed to be able to do that.

The odd prisoner just sat back down in the wooden chair as if it was one of the most normal things in the world. And the way he sat, sitting with such quiet ease and confidence, he may as well be in charge of the world too—reclining like a monarch upon his throne instead of a prisoner in a wooden chair. "Speak, man. What is it that you wish to say?"

Head bowed and hands clenched in front of him, the warden stood with pressed lips for a moment. "It's about last night…" He gripped his hands together more tightly, resisting the urge to rub them together and risk offending the odd prisoner. "Some things appeared in the courtyard, things that looked like they didn't belong there. They caused a lot of trouble for the guards."

"What-ever could you mean?" asked the odd prisoner. "You say that the things _do not belong? _I pose this line of questioning in a rhetorical fashion rather than a literal one. The _things _of which you speak were of no more consequence than a rose in a rock-garden or, inversely, a rock in a rose-garden. Not every thing can exist everywhere, yet circumstances can dictate that things can come to exist in places for set amounts of time. If they are germane or not is a matter of subjective considerations. So, I ask you again. What could you mean by what you ask?"

For all of his privileged and enriched upbringing, the warden barely understood what the odd prisoner was saying. He understood the rock-garden analogy, but he didn't catch on to the rest. "I don't think those things were any kinds of rocks or roses I ever saw before, mister. Like nothing I've ever seen before." _Like nothing on Earth, _was what he thought.

"Really now?" responded the odd prisoner. "Then perhaps you should get out more often. Why, I most certainly do. Travel is known for broadening one's sense of place, if not places. There are things in other places which you can only begin to imagine. Such other places and things are perhaps of the sort you would probably never wish to see. Yet they are there for those who seek enlightenment. Surely, a _worldly _man such as you can come to a rapport with the sentiment?"

No warden, chubby or otherwise, would ever want to hear of an inmate _going out _on a regular basis. And when the odd prisoner spoke of this, the warden knew it was just too true. He also saw how the odd prisoner was able to do it—the odd prisoner seeming to go _into _the wall and vanish. Worst of all, the security cameras seemed to work the best whenever the odd prisoner did leave. It was as if he _wanted _video-recorded proof of him doing that, of what he could do. "Please, I'm asking you to stop," said the warden.

"Ah, so you plead for me to cease," mused the odd prisoner aloud. "According to the sociologists of this world, every human relationship involves some form of dominance of one side over the other. It is quite clear which party of _this _relationship is dominant, is it not? Now, plead again as so my witness can be doubly assured of seeing and hearing this."

"Who…?" asked the warden, suddenly looking at the upper bunk and suddenly seeing the odd prisoner's cell-mate. The warden wanted to ask, _Where the Hell did _you _come from?_ That would've been the wrong question, because Jimmy had been sitting up there this whole time. The odd prisoner somehow made it as so Jimmy wasn't visible or noticeable. Real-life magic…

Now the odd prisoner smiled. "You wish to plead? Perhaps we should bargain. What _could _you do to appease me? I should lower my trousers and bare my anatomical nether-regions as so you can pleasure me with your mouth. Power is quite an aphrodisiac, as you already know. It requires carnal release.

"Or rather, it could be that one of your young daughters would do in that regard. Their bodies are kept firm and desirable with the dual efforts of rigorous supervised exercise and cosmetic surgery. The one whose eighteenth birthday passed last week would be just the thing. Her ripe young teenage flesh would be an exquisite offering." He saw the warden's reaction. "Oh, come now. The child is _illegitimate_, after all. Of what concern is her well-being to you? You even deny her existence as an heir to your family's wealth."

_Nobody _was supposed to know about that child, nobody but the woman who decided to _not get an abortion_. It took no less than two hundred-thousand kept that damned woman's mouth shut, along with a cushy job in a state office that was near the state border. It wasn't even a job either, more like the woman showing up once a month to make sure her office was still there while her hefty commission made it into one of her bank accounts. A lot of other things about the warden's life were also supposed to be not known. Yet the odd prisoner _did _know. Why not? Anyone who can have eyes in the back of his head ought to be able to have eyes elsewhere—and not all of them on his anatomy.

The odd prisoner lifted his head a bit, nose up, looking like someone who has smelled something awful. He said, "Your ignorance is understandable if not tolerable. There is more to existence than the endless pursuit of wealth. Why, I have come to see wealth which has no equal in this world. I have seen massive palaces in which the very masonry contains powdered ruby and thrones of platinum. Servants bustle about in clothing threaded with silver. I shall not speak of gold, for it is a contemptible metal. As compared to emperors and empires, of power and worlds, _you _are truly pathetic. You are in a rather pitiful position to bargain."

Either the warden was feeling very stupid or he was just not believing what the odd prisoner was saying. He went back to what he came here to ask (or _beg_) for. "We're getting too much trouble. It's got to stop! Please!"

"_You weak fool!_" came a mighty sound from the odd prisoner, making the warden fall down. With that angry shout from the odd prisoner, all the walls and bars—even the air itself—resonated with the sound of the odd prisoner's voice. Oh yes, that surround-sound trick was in full effect. "You cannot bargain with those of my higher station. Furthermore, you cannot even _begin _to bargain. Anything you could ever offer of this pitiful world would be of little consequence when I have access to entire _worlds. _Unlike the carnal triumphs which part their legs for your base desires, I am able to give you a complete and utter _no._ Begone fool, lest your pitiful life be ceased here and now. Like _so!_" He made a gesture with his right hand.

_Flick-flicker. With that blinking of the lights, two massive figures flanked the chair of the odd prisoner. They, the beings…_were so tall that the tops of their heads nearly brushed the ceiling—heads wrapped tightly with black straps that could be plastic or leather. Their bodies covered with browned and patched material of a strange sort—what were likely large patches of skin from animals never seen before. Their hands were the worst, mechanical hands which clacked in anticipation of doing some severe harm.

It took the mightiest of effort for the warden to not scream his damned head off…unless he wanted it _ripped _off. This is what the warden saw would happen if he _did _make a noise—seeing the events in his mind as if it was actually set to happen. It would not end prettily.

First, if he _did _shout, those strap-headed _things _would kill the warden in the bloodiest, noisiest, most meat-ripping way possible. His fine suit would be torn to bits and scraps, as would the fat flesh beneath. As he was screaming like somebody being killed (which he would be), the prison guards would come in and start blasting everything in sight with buckshot. Maybe the odd prisoner would be hit, maybe not. But the warden had the idea that the odd prisoner couldn't be killed with mere mortal weaponry. (He thought that maybe it would take silver bullets or Holy Water. Then he remembered that such things are for _vampires _and _werewolves, _not people like the odd prisoner…whatever he is. It wouldn't matter because anything can kill a human being like the warden—especially mechanical hands.) Oh yes, _and _the strap-headed things with the mechanical hands would rip his head off in the most awesome way possible.

After all the fun was done, blood-spattered walls and all, the warden would be dead meat. That would be the end for him. Play the music and roll the end credits, black background with white letters scrolling, messages and words through infinite darkness...

None of that actually happened. Those things did not attack the warden. So the warden was not ripped to shreds. In fact…

_Blink-flicker. _Another right-hand gesture of the odd prisoner, and the situation changed. A swoosh of rushed indoor wind, and the things with the mechanical hands were gone. Vanished, disappeared, whatever you want to call it, they just were not there anymore. They didn't even say goodbye.

"Leave my immediate physical presence, you petty and weak man," said the odd prisoner. "Leave my physical presence in the knowledge that I have temporarily blessed you with your life. Yet know well that neither my patience nor mercy are infinite. This interview is done."

With a bitter look on his big fat pasty face, a face that looked even pastier because his suit was black, the warden turned and quickly walked out of the prison cell. He did not run. That would just be too much. He had already suffered too many indignities already, and being told _no _was the worst of all.

Outside and away from the opening of the odd prisoner's cell, the warden was feeling more like his big (fat) self again. "Shut up!" he yelled at the prison guards. Not that they said anything. They just looked to him as if they were going to ask him about what happened in the cell.

The prison guards would have to ask because they did not hear a word of the conversation in that prison cell. It was like the prison cell was the odd prisoner's domain, so much so that even the air itself obeyed him. The writings-covered wall definitely did.

Damned if they would believe the warden if he did tell them. The odd prisoner used super-duper magic-powers to find out about his life. (Uh-huh.) Then the odd prisoner made some big-bad boogie-men appear out of nowhere. (Gotcha.) Yeah, yeah, and they had mechanical _robot-_hands too! (Sure, buddy…)

Whatever the case, they did not hear the odd prisoner say _no _to the warden_._ While the odd prisoner could tell the warden what to do (like where to shove it when it came to requests)_, _the warden was still able to tell everyone one else around here what to do. He told the prison guards to _shut up, _so they stayed shut-up and wordless as they escorted him back to the hidey-hole of his office.


	10. Chapter 10

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 10

…

1.

…

_Jimmy couldn't see a damned thing. Bad enough he couldn't move. His body felt all numb and slightly tingly—like when someone's footfalls asleep, except all over. He nevertheless had a slight sensation of vibration as spinning wheels hummed along a hard surface. Something was moving …. Dumb ass, _he _was being moved. _

_Whamp-p-p! It was an exclamation of sound like an armored door being slammed shut. Jimmy's eyes…_practically popped open. Good move, Jimmy-boy. Now he could see where the fork he was.

First thing the dude saw was the headrest and windshield of this-here zooming car—the windshield showing a night-darkened view of the road ahead, headlights showing maybe about a few feet ahead into the rushing darkness of the road ahead. Wisps of familiar fog rippled past like smoky spider-webs. Beyond that, there was the infinite darkness of the road ahead and around.

Thought Jimmy at this point. _Ooh, no… _He looked worriedly out at that forbidding landscape of darkness. _Not again. _

Yes, again. Again, again, and again some more. Just as the massive rusted whirling blades of an old factory fan always come turning back to their previous positions, Jimmy was back here…again. It doesn't matter how fast or how slowly those blades turn on their electric-powered circular path. They will come around again, to go around again, to go around again… Time repeats itself. So welcome back, Jimmy. It's _her _car that you're riding in.

"_Nya-a-ar,_" he said, trying to get his _mouth _to say something in English_. _Very carefully now, he tried again. "_Nya-a, ha-har-r-r…_"

Obviously, Jimmy's mouth wasn't doing what his brain was telling it to do. The parts of his head responsible for human speech were _not _doing what his brain was telling it to do. He raised hands to his face and tried to touch his thick-feeling cheeks and found that his fingers weren't right either. What, were they busted or something?

As a matter of fact…they were. Not _busted, _as in broken and crippled. Nope, it was more like those things were completely messed up from human-normal. No human fingers are supposed to look like these things attached to his palms now. Instead of those fine and refined prehensile appendages that human beings use to do things like play Chopin on the piano and kick virtual ass at _Street Fighter XII _on the latest Xbox system_, _he now had thick muscle-sausage looking things that looked more suited to wrestling chunks of metal and work multi-ton machinery. Oh, and his fingernails were claws too.

Muscle-sausage claw-fingers in his lap, he also noticed what he was wearing—red coveralls with smears of…something. These coveralls he had on weren't just a dyed version of the sort of thing that somebody can buy down at the local K-Mart or Workin' Man stores. No, this getup of his was made of some thick insulating material that he had never seen before. The weave of the strange cloth was so fine that the threads were not visible to his unaided eyes …as if the threads were microscopic or something.

Bigger question, what _was _all of this? His hands were changed, as was his face, just like the rest of him. This car's rear-view mirror was angled away, and Jimmy couldn't see his own face. Yet, he had this nagging idea that if he saw himself at this point, he would probably not like what he saw.

It didn't hurt though, and it didn't particularly worry him. Then again, there are burn victims and people born with severe deformities that can somewhat get along in life without feeling pain. With the right therapy or mindset, there reaches a point when a person comes to accept it. The bodily damage is done. No use crying over spilled milk. Or spilled blood, in this case.

"_Elkric, sya,_" he sadly muttered, pounding his sausage-finger claw-hands against the thighs of the grimy red coveralls he had on. Jimmy didn't notice or care anymore that he wasn't speaking English anymore. He wasn't speaking Gaelic either, but who's counting?

"Oh, honey… Didn't I tell you that you have to be ready?" asked that familiar sweet voice. It was the dead woman, wearing a flower-print springtime dress and looking very pretty—so long as one saw her from this side. The lean musculature of her long slender arms tensed for flickers of moments, her hands trying to keep this fast-zooming car on the road. (Hey, at least _her _fingers weren't shaped like servings of breakfast meats.) "You don't have forever to get ready. What's going to happen is coming up fast for you."

"_Uhu?_" Jimmy made what he hoped was a questioning sound. His mouth still wasn't doing what a human mouth was supposed to do.

The dead woman tilted her head sympathetically to the right and sighed. "I could wish things were all better for everyone. Hmmm… Wishes aren't worth much though, sweetie. If fishes were wishes, then nobody would ever go hungry again. Just wanting something won't make it happen." _Thump-p-p. _Her hands gripping the steering wheel. "Now that wasn't very nice, Mister Highway! We should be glad that Mister Car has some very strong tires!"

"_Nyu dn'ous…_jus'like a mother," said Jimmy. When that last bit of speech came out, he flexed his mouth—was glad that he could flex his mouth. "_Hey, _yeah!"

Seems now that his brain found a way to make his mouth more cooperative. That's one good thing about human brains, very resilient. Humans may be a bunch of murderous, lazy, booze-guzzling jerks and fools at times. But even the worst of circumstances can be fixed under certain circumstances. Going back to the crippled-body analogy, it's all about the right state of mind.

"Of course I sound like a mother, sweetie!" said the dead woman. "That's because I was one! Now the rules told me to be…" Her voice changed into a triple vibration. "_Told me to be something else as well._"

"_Luh…_ Lady?" asked Jimmy, his happiness turning at a sharp angle to replaced with cold shock. First his mouth recovers. Now the woman's voice changes. He turned to look at her and was seeing both sides of her face once more, both the pretty side and the smash-mutilated side. "Lady, you're scaring me here…!"

"_The beginning of the end shall come again if you do not serve your role,_" said the triple voice from the dead woman's mouth. "_You have less time than from when this began. You must be ready before then._" _Thump-p-p…_ This entire car gave a severe bounce, yet the dead woman—or the _things_ speaking through the dead woman—seemed not to mind. Dead people don't care, after all.

"What do you mean by that?" asked Jimmy, his speech reverting to that other language forced to him by the odd shape of his mouth and maybe the altered parts of his brain. Speaking of brains, he was trying to use his to understand what was just being said. He looked down, thinking.

_Thump-pop!_ Something mechanical in the car had given away. The dead woman leaned forward, gripping the steering wheel up close as if the thing was going to break out of her control. "Uh-oh, Jimmy-honey! I don't think this little ride of ours will last too much longer."

That was for sure. After that nasty bump in the highway, this ride was starting to feel wrong. It was as if Jimmy could feel something in the car's chassis having _snapped. _There are probably about a few hundred thousand moving, spinning, buzzing, and working parts that go into a modern-day car, but there are only about four great big pieces of metal that hold the whole business together. Now, what should happen if one of those big-huge important pieces should…_split?_ Jimmy knew that if they hit any more snags in this dark highway, this car ride would end in a way like something out of one of those Hollywood action flicks.

Said the dead woman, "Honey-baby, you have to go. I'm just _so happy _that you are almost ready. You're not quite there yet, but…you're getting there. I won't say goodbye, because we'll see you again no matter what happens." Taking her right hand off of the steering wheel, the hand caressed one of Jimmy's cheeks and slid up to his forehead before giving a…_shove._

_It wasn't as if just Jimmy's head was pushed back. It was more like all of himself was shoved through a hole in the car door that went off and away. He saw the hole in the car-door as if looking at it from the bottom of an infinitely dark cave, falling into the darkness…_

…

"_Whoah-h-h!_" yelled Jimmy, bouncing up in the bunk as if he'd been slammed here. It's how someone wakes up from one of those dreams where they're falling.

Apparently not falling anymore, he laid right where he was on the top bunk—his eyes and mouth popped wide open. This dude was experiencing that whole _what-the-Hell-just-happened _feeling, reorienting himself after a nightmare. It was not just a nightmare, though. Something more _real _than that had happened to him there.

That was there. This is here. _This _is the prison cell, still darkened but indirectly lit by way of the big lights that shone down into this area of the penitentiary. Though deprived the privilege of owning an alarm clock or seeing daylight, he had that feeling that it was just about an hour before wake-up. An hour from now, buzzers would get loud, and the prison guards will be around and about in making lots of noise to wake everyone up.

Meanwhile, whatever happened to Jimmy in those hours between sleep and awakening, it got the attention of the odd prisoner. The odd prisoner was in fact sitting in front of the wall of strange writing. A person would wonder how the odd prisoner could read all of those lines of symbols and strange scrawls in the dim gloom of this darkened prison cell. Yet the odd prisoner did not use just his physical eyes to read the writing. He used the eyes of his mind.

Said the odd prisoner, "So it seems that you have returned, my witness." He got out of his chair and floated up from his chair, going over to Jimmy. "We shall see…"

Damned straight. The odd prisoner was _floating. _As in, he was moving through the air with his feet off…of…the…floor…. Those floats on holiday parade couldn't have done it better. Given his current altitude, the top of his bearded head was nearly brushing the darkened ceiling. Neat-o trick, pal. How'd you do it?

If this event seems downright freaky when considered from a distance, then just imagine how Jimmy was taking this. He was seeing someone levitating, for goodness' sake. Thinking to himself, _Ho-o-lee…!_

"What _has _happened to you, my witness?" asked the odd prisoner. "Even with the extent of my growing power and perceptions, I am unable to tell. Something of your status has changed. It is an ever-so-slight change and barely perceptible. Yet it is significant, perhaps akin to the faint aroma of red wine on breath across a long dining table."

Jimmy's ears were picking up what the odd prisoner was saying, yet his mind wasn't processing it. He just could not get over that whole _floating _thing! Again, that guy is _floating!_ As in, _levitating, defying gravity, breaking the laws of gravitational physics as known by modern-day science._ (Ah, damned scientists. What do they know, anyway? They're the same bunch that used to say that the Earth was flat until someone went around it in a ship.) The word _hovering _was close, yet that sounds like something using fans and propellers to stay up in the air. He wasn't hovering, yet something was making the odd prisoner buoyant.

Our friend Jimmy stared, and the odd prisoner was staring right back. The odd prisoner may be doing what should be impossible for a human being, yet he was still able to talk to Jimmy as if everything was all smooth and normal—talking like somebody sitting back in a summer-time lounge chair. Yeah, buddy… Just put up some trees for shade and one of those fruity red-drinks with the little umbrellas in them. It _was _pretty shady in here, too.

The odd prisoner floated closer—looking at Jimmy, _staring _into Jimmy. People can make off-the-cuff comments like _staring into someone's soul _and not mean it. This was for real. The odd prisoner was looking past Jimmy's eyes and _into _him.

Say something, dumb idiot. Say something before the odd prisoner uses some of those kick-ass magic powers to make your head explode because he can't properly see what's going on in it. "I'm different because I'm getting ready to serve you, sir," said Jimmy.

There, he answered the odd prisoner. Jimmy regretted saying it, too. _Ready to serve you, _huh? That sounds just about as corny as saying, _Ready to serve you, oh great Master. _If this was a commercial, he'd probably have said _ready to serve _like some of those pre-cooked boxed meals, or some cream-filled pastries. What are they called again? Ding-dongs? Ho-hos? _Twinkies. _That's it. Twinkies, those things are so chock-full of nitrates and other preservatives that they can be stored in a nuclear fallout shelter for about thirty thousand years and _still _be edible. Space-alien archeologists would come down in their flying saucers after the fall of this civilization and wonder about the strange custom of leaving semi-toxic food-stuffs in underground places. (Maybe it had something to do with how some other humans in another time had their internal organs yanked out after death—their mutilated, bandage-wrapped, honey-soaked bodies put in gigantic pyramids? Mummified remains, hence the word _mummy. _Honey-soaked… Hmm, tastes like chicken.)

"It is good," said the odd prisoner, smiling in the dark. (No, he wasn't smiling because he was enjoying the tasted of corpse-flesh from Ancient Egypt—which may or may not taste like poultry.) He smiled because he was satisfied with Jimmy's answer. The odd prisoner then floated back to the wooden chair set in front of the wall—the wall that was all full of that strange writing. "Now, about the accursed female creature that plays at being human, what comes to pass shall determine her…_readiness_. My power has grown great enough as so I can send more than a mere solitary interloper this time. I can send _more, _indeed…" He then laughed, the air itself seeming to laugh with him, echoing throughout the entire wing of this prison.

…

2.

…

Having jogged nine times around the block for exercise and to clear her mind a bit, having washed herself up in the shower and ready for the day, Heather was eating a late breakfast with Intemelessy—both of them sitting at the table in the apartment's kitchenette, big sliding-glass doors letting in the light from the city day. Heather had on another pair of blue jeans and another sleeveless top—one with the letters _SH _on the back and high up. Intemelessy had on her combat-gymnast outfit of shorts and top with her weaponry in place, hip-holstered pistols and glowing blade strapped to the small of her slender back. Breakfast with a Goth super-heroine, that's what this is.

Or it was more like just Heather having breakfast—herself having a bowl of sugary cereal with a tall mug of highly caffeinated coffee and a bagel on the side while Intemelessy sat primly perched in the chair across the table. Intemelessy didn't eat because that synthetic girl with her robotic insides was fueled forever. As for what Heather was having, some would presuppose that sugar plus caffeine would be a recipe for guaranteed hyperactivity. Well, people who thought that way didn't know Heather. There were days in which that nineteen-year-old girl would finish off about six bowls of cereal and _still _not be full, that skinny body of hers not changing in the least, still looking slim as a fashion model. Then there were days when Heather would go without breakfast or lunch and not care. It's not normal, and it's not too weird either. It's just…Heather.

Speaking of assumptions and developments, let's get something out of the way. Two very nice-looking girls sitting at a table in the morning. Is it the morning after—wink-wink? Maybe it would be nobody's business if it was. If Heather did enjoy Intemelessy's company, it was a private moment that would not be described in civilized company. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. Maybe the slight flush to Heather's cheeks was actually from a post-exercise hot shower. Whatever. That'll just be one question answered by people's imaginations.

Halfway through her cream-cheese bagel, one of those circular pieces of baked bread, Heather put it down to look out the glass windows—her hazel eyes looking unfocused and distant. "Mel didn't come by while I was sleep, did he?"

"From the lack of modulation in your voice, it seems as if your thoughts are preoccupied with erratic concerns," stated Intemelessy.

"Wow, Is _that _how you'd put it?" responded Heather, turning her attention to Intemelessy. "If you're gonna pass for human, your language is gonna need a makeover. A normal person would say something like, 'What's on your mind?' Or something like, 'Hey, what's up?' At least that's English. Don't ask me about what they'd say in China, because my Chinese is as bad as my Portuguese. And since I can't understand a word of Portuguese, you know where this is going."

"You are correct regarding the nuances of my speech patterns," stated Intemelessy. "My personality emulation was set in its beta phase upon its activation. I therefore require interaction with humans in order to secure more variable data regarding the minutia of social contact. My testing was interrupted due to the destruction of my creators."

Heather felt warmth coming to her cheeks after Intemelessy said _destruction of my creators_—the closest thing that Intemelessy had as family and friends_._ Heather knew what it was like to lose one's family and regretted getting the discussion steered in that direction. Well okay, Intemelessy didn't have a _family._ And Intemelessy didn't come into consciousness until after they were killed. They may have been a roomful of lab geeks, but they were _Intemelessy's _lab-geeks—now dead lab-geeks.

"Hey, come on! I was just _joking!_" went Heather. "You're good enough." _Good enough, huh? Like, in bed? Great, I'm tripping over my tongue. _"I mean, you _talking _is good enough. We could go down to the corner store right now, and nobody would know what you are. It's not like anybody believes that some robot-girl from an alternate reality is here to act as somebody's bodyguard. Ever read, 'The Purloined Letter_'_? It was this freaky story about somebody hiding a stolen letter. To hide it, all they had to do was put it out in the open where nobody would look."

Said Intemelessy. "It remains true that the concept can be effective if the means of detection are only physical. They are capable of detecting you with other means that go beyond physio-sensory input."

Heather pressed her lips together for a moment before responding. "I think I probably understood most of what you said. So it's like they can use something else besides eyes and ears to find what they're looking for…like mind-powers and stuff. Does that mean…?" _R-r-r-r-rumble…_ Something big was happening. "_What the Hell, dude!_"

Around the time that Heather made a vaguely blasphemous reference to Satan's place of residence, there was a big loud interruption which made everything vibrate—seeming like a small earthquake. This wasn't earthquake territory, so it wasn't that. Still, it was the deepest, thickest and most obnoxious-sounding vehicle engine that Heather ever remembered hearing before. Something out there was a-rumblin' and a-grumblin' right outside the apartment windows.

This is a city. Big vehicles come through all the time. (Screw the traffic laws about big vehicles not allowed in residential zones.) That thing didn't sound like just any sort of truck that Heather ever heard before. It sounded more like…something else. And that was all the line of thinking Heather needed to make a run for the door. Intemelessy followed, a swift leggy stride.

…

Out here in the parking lot, the air was all full of dusty smoke and noise. The smoke came from about six huge exhaust pipes. As for the noise, it was a low grumbling roar of a too-powerful engine. Heather coughed a bit and tried waving her right hand in front of her face, which didn't do much because doing that just waved the smoke around. More smoke here than Thursday night in a Californian college-dorm. Like that kind of smoke, Heather was able to get used to it after a pace and see what there was to see.

The girl could somewhat see a very big, very nasty and very obnoxious beast of a truck. Its trailer was a big-huge thing the size of several houses side by side and was easily as high up as the second-story windows of the apartment building itself, as long as the apartment building's parking lot too. Up front was what they call the cab section—a huge hulking thing with six gigantic wheels each the size of a car, the exhaust pipes roaring out all of the wonderful stuff that filled the air. (No way in Hades would that thing pass an emissions test unless the people doing the inspection were dumber than tree stumps.) Damned thing made a cargo-hauler's eighteen-wheeler look like a plastic go-cart in comparison.

The big-huge trailer-section was being unloaded right now. The gigantic doors on the rear opened up. Then a set of three pasty-pale guys in red coveralls came out, hopping to the hard-flat surface of the apartment parking-lot. One of them was still in the trailer section and was pushing out something huge and metal.

There was a blinding blue flash of light and a deafeningly loud sound. Heather temporarily lost her hearing, and the flash of light left a haze of sparkles across her vision. Though the girl screamed, there was only the awareness of her throat vibrating and mouth working. The girl could not hear her own voice. "_What the Hell!_ _What's going on!_"

Slender but inhumanly strong fingers were still pressed down on the upper part of Heather's back, near her neck. Her vision clearing a bit, as was her awareness of this situation, Heather turned her head to the right to see the pale firm lengths Intemelessy's legs—slightly apart in a triangle stance used for firing. It was Intemelessy who was holding Heather down and out of the line of fire from potential enemy attacks.

Not feeling particularly grateful, Heather shouted, "_Have you lost your mind, you crazy robot! You nearly blinded me!_"

Using her mind was exactly what Intemelessy was doing, that computer-mind of hers. Being computer-minded, Intemelessy was able to think and act without the things that would weaken a human being in combat. Surprise, fear, confusion, those are human weaknesses. Intemelessy was not human and was able to act with severe efficiency. Identify and destroy the enemy before the enemy could counter-attack.

By this point, Heather could see well enough—going wide-eyed and wide-mouthed, finally knowing _what the Hell _just happened. Note that the people from the truck were called _guys. _They weren't called men, because men are human. Those guys were not.

Intemelessy's shooting had killed the three pasty-looking guys who were trying to unload that gigantic metal thing from the back of the gigantic truck—huge guys in coveralls, their faces so pale that it looked as if they hadn't seen daylight since around the time humans first learned how to bang two rocks together to make fire for cooking wooly-mammoth meat. Those pasty-pale faces of theirs were dead and still now, their chests blasted clear through, dark life-fluid puddling onto the surface of the parking lot.

It wasn't blood—not the kind normal people would recognize. Blood is supposed to be _red, _damn it. Bright red and shiny. That stuff was shiny, but it was a dark kind of shiny. And if the stuff inside of their bodies was different, so were their faces. Those pasty-pale faces had _faces _beneath. As the guys lay dead, the _artificial flesh of their faces detached a little, _showing the edges of scaly faces beneath. Reptilian… They weren't more of those midget-guys in red coveralls, yet they were still serving the same side. As in, the _other _side of what can be found in _Silent Hill_.

If this was an episode in a daytime television show, a movie, or even one of those long-lost radio-plays, this probably wouldn't have happened. That's because bad guys never use the same plan more than once in television shows, movies, etcetera. They would try something, get foiled by the good guys, and not try it again. And if it was television, the bad guys would run away to try something else next episode. (Can't kill the bad guys on daytime television because then the thought-police in government would throw a bitch-fit about _violence_.) Bad guys aren't supposed to act like repeats.

These guys were acting like repeats. They may have broken rules that apply to the storytelling in movies and television. But damned if they didn't get it right this time…again.

What did they get right, you ask? It goes like this… That huge thing they were unloading from the back of the truck was something which resembled a kind of vehicle engine. It was blocky in shape, had some pipes and thick electrical cables attached, and was generally made out of a reddish metal. On the left side of the thing was a certain infamous yellow-and-black circular symbol, the one with three yellow triangles in it that means _radiation_. It was an engine alright. An engine from a _starship _or worse. A _starship _would just travels around in this universe—if starships do exist…and if one believes those supermarket tabloids about little gray bastards in skin-tight suits riding around in saucers and abducting people. But why would some saucer-jockeys from outer-space use a human symbol on their vehicle's engines? Then again, who the Hell knows where it really came from? Maybe humans from somewhere else made the thing before it got found by those freaks in the red coveralls.

It was a bigger version of the thing which was earlier seen at the outskirts of a certain place. (You already know the name of that fog-enshrouded abandoned town, and there's no sense in pounding away at the name time and time again like a trip-hammer on maximum overdrive.) It happened before. Now it happened again. Same shi-… Uh, same stuff, different day.

That huge engine-thing with the _radiation _symbol on the side got started. Nobody in sight tripped a switch. Nobody pulled a lever. Yet it got started anyway. If the rumbling roar of the huge truck was loud, this thing was louder. It shook and vibrated. Those trailing electrical cables began sparking, _red _sparks, trying to put out energy to attachments that just weren't there anymore. The engine-thing began vibrating in a way that made the air itself seem to change, made _everything _seem to change, going to a side.

Heather felt a sickening headache coming on as her eyes tried to understand what was happening. Closing her eyes helped a little at first, but things became so bad that the girl just…_couldn't take it, going to her knees and feeling the parking lot going down, everything going down. _

_Not again, thought Heather before her thinking eased into the darkness of unconsciousness. Being unconscious, the girl wasn't able to witness the change which came over the apartment building and everything within the range of that engine-thing—the engine-machine that raped the fabric of reality and made a Hell of a lot of noise while doing it. Nope, Heather wasn't seeing it because Heather's mind was out like a light. Here's a lullaby to close your eyes, goodbye… _


	11. Chapter 11

_Silent Hill Disciples of the Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 11

…

1.

…

_Jimmy knew the place. Oh yes he did, even if he didn't want to know it. Just like the grotesque knowledge a child has of an animal's insides run over by cars (spl-l-lat), just as full-grown people know that they could become roadkill themselves (thump-crunch) and their dying visions being the rusted nasty underside of someone's used car, just as all of those red-colored things were known and knowable, Jimmy knew…_where this was.

He knew about this dark little machine-room, the small space being so hot and full of sounds. Rusted metal made for the walls—dull metal-brick walls. And where some sections of the walls were missing, there were exposed lengths of pipe-work and thick electrical cables, encrusted with the grit and grime of thousands of years. Pipes above had sloshing sounds coming from inside—pipes that carried blood and other fluids. These pipes and thick electrical cables were behind the walls, above the ceiling and in the floor, connected to the strange machines. These machines rumbled and churned away in many other small hot rooms like this one, rooms illuminated by greasy crimson-toned light bulbs. They didn't use florescent lights because, whenever they operated machines that interacted with certain worlds, florescent lights simply burnt out in the presence of so much hard radiation.

Yes, that's why rooms like these are hot—not _hot _in the temperature sense, but hot in the nuclear reactor sense. Grab your nuclear-biological-chemical gear, 'cause you're going to need it. Some of these rooms were somewhat passable if a person was in and out in about an hour. That person would just have to be checked out for some kinds of cancer a few months down the line, that's all. Oh, and forget about having normal-looking kids. And forget about entering some of these rooms at all, because some places here are so chock-full of hard radiation that they'll kill a dude in about a minute and leave a corpse so radioactive that it'd have to be buried in lead. (Some people think that last bit is an exaggeration on top of a joke. Well, maybe those people never heard about a quaint little place in the Russian countryside called _Chernobyl_.)

These places are not fit for human habitation. Such is why humans sometimes have organizations full of expert-humans to warn away other humans. After that, they put up signs like the ones with circles that have three black triangles in them—signs with words like _Caution: Radiation. Do not enter._ Translated, _Stay the Hell away from this mother-forker._

Screw humans. Screw humans and the cars they rode in on, because this place is not for human beings at all. Humans are not the only beings capable of digging rocks out of a planet's crust, melting it down and making clever devices. And these creatures knew that as a fact.

The creatures here are _humanoid_—foreshortened parodies of the very race of beings that was often their enemy. Most of the creatures working this machine resembled little men in red coveralls. That is to say, each one of them had two arms and two legs on a torso, the business topped off with passable heads…temporarily ignoring just how those faces were twisted over with cancer-thickened skin and more than a few open sores. Some of the creatures had sores with moss growing out of them like little patches of green peach fuzz. But these things were made for what they can do with their hands, not strutting the fashion-show runways. What hands they were, too. Their thick-calloused fingers were at work in pushing thick metal buttons and work some heavy levers that needed pulling at certain times. Those creatures could pass for being midgets if seen on a dark moonless night, yet there was no way in Hell that the creature sitting above them could do the same.

Above them, reclining in an open-top cage was something else—a creature with a massive head too big for its corpse-pale body and huge arms, mottled all over with rotten-looking lesions and moldy spots like the ones had of other creatures here. Because this guy had no legs, it instead relied on its massive arms and powerful hands for mobility. No doubt, those arms could rip the head off of one of those midget-dudes with all the ease of popping a champagne cork, though this creature seldom had to do so. It also used those arms and hands to plug electrical cables and grimy rubbery tubes into metal sockets attached to its body where legs would have been.

What it did here was hard to tell from an outsider's point of view. It just seemed to lounge up there in its rust-metal upside-down open cage-thing, channeling electricity through its body, its massive lumpy head occasionally swaying. Whatever the thing was doing, it wasn't sitting back with a beer.

When that massive-headed creature was satisfied with whatever purpose it had in this room, it detached the electrical cables and grimy rubbery tubes from its legless lower torso. Then it crawling out through the top of its cage, going through a hole in the ceiling—grunting as it left this room.

Creatures, that's what they use for labor in this place. You might call them _monsters, _though that would be very unfair. A _monster _is something that is not natural. A _monster _is something that deviates. Yet in this world, these creatures are as natural as can be. Even if they looked like twisted mockeries of humanity, even if they looked like biological rejects, they are the ones running the show around here. It might also be pretty damned rude to talk about these creatures in such ways because maybe they had human beings in their distant ancestry. Or maybe these things came from worlds where _they _made it up the evolutionary ladder instead of that species of beings so famous on Earth_._

Humans? Talking about _those _things? Those big-tall bastards with skin too smooth and a little bit of wrong-looking fur on top of their heads? Not around here, pal. You're talking to the wrong entities. Why don't you try the next dimension over? Meanwhile, these creatures got work to do—the _great works_. Won't be long before all the worlds belong to this one anyway.

_Bzzt-flicker… _A black box lit up in a corner of this room—a video monitor, maybe one about the size of someone's head. A _human-sized _head that is, not like the deluxe-sized noggin on the thing that climbed out of here. The black-box monitor was thus far unnoticed because the front of it was glossed over with a coating of algae-like slime.

Now that it was on, it was the brightest thing in here. With a faint haze of static, rows of red characters on black background appeared on the greasy screen. Someone with a smattering of Ancient Greek could maybe catch some familiar-looking letters—familiar but not totally recognizable. Beyond that bit of comprehensible ancient text, a person would be hard-pressed to understand the rest of the letters—looking like things made by Martian linguists tripped out on the extraterrestrial equivalent of LSD. They weren't _numbers _either, so don't even try that suggestion. Try calling them squeebles and boon-woggles, gruks and narfens… Not that those were actually the names of those strange symbols, mind you. Those whacked-out labels were as good as any for now. Otherwise, to come up with equivalents in any human language could probably take up a hundred pages or two of explanation.

Hundreds of pages of explanation…? Yes indeed. These guys have ideas that run _deep, _man. They are deep in the workings of various realities…_as so they could rip it the Hell up_.

Having the machines churning and groaning away, night-in and night-out, more of the same always being the way of things. Deep below and inside a world of machines and pipes, this place was older than worlds, continuing to exist even while civilizations fell to ruin due to various forms of self-destruction. While Rome crumbled on our version of Earth, while nuclear war ravaged other versions of Earth, while massive cities the sizes of countries died out due to a lack of reproduction among its citizenry in other versions of Earth besides that, while cities rose and died on human planets that did not even call themselves _Earth, _this place kept on existing. And if these creatures had anything to do with some of those worlds falling and failing—maybe they did, and maybe they didn't.

Is that their plan? Screw around with the fabric of reality? Invade ripe new worlds that never had to deal with them before? Hell yeah… It's as good a plan as any, ain't it? The forces of darkness in this place had nothing better to do for the past ten thousand years or so, and so they did what they wanted. Grannies have their gambling, frittering away their pensions before they get their curtain-calls from the Grim Reaper. College kids have their bungee jumping and the occasional broken neck to prove it. Meanwhile, people between college-age and granny-age have their hard liquor—good for rotting the guts, rotting the brain, and (most importantly) rotting the prolonged suffering of an empty life. Everybody needs a hobby, no matter how destructive and deranged it is otherwise. So it's perfectly fine for the powers-that-be in this place to have conquest of alternate realities as their fun thing in life. As for those who disagree, tell them to go have another drink or smoke some more weed. Forget that they ever heard of this other place.

This is what Jimmy knew. From coming to this place and inhabiting a body that belongs here, the knowledge was even closer and more personal. And since he had neither bottle nor blunt to chemically dull the agony of existing int his place, there was no forgetting about it_. _He knew about this place and what its plan was, or at least a version of its plan. He knew what the machines do and a little bit about how they operate. He knew this because…_he was currently one of the little humanoid bastards operating them._

He stopped himself. Knowing full well what these machines can do, he stopped what he was doing and stiffly put his malformed inhuman hands down to his sides—stiffly because the muscles of these arms were feeling a little on the dead side. What do they call it? Oh yeah, _rigor mortis. _But if he was dead, that wouldn't explain how this odd body of his could _still move. _As a rule, dead folks aren't terribly mobile.

His not-quite-dead eyes staring at the levers and thick metal buttons on the machine-panel in front of him, part of himself informing his mind to _push this _and _pull that _as needed. Being in this body and having become one of the creatures, the desire to work the strange machines was a compulsion. There was a really old movie where the priests chanted over and over again, _The power of Christ compels you! _Here, it's more like, _The power of darkness compels you! The power of darkness compels you! The power of darkness…_

Nope, wasn't going to do it. Jimmy's mind was human, even if the brain it was borrowing wasn't. Not working, not doing anything, Jimmy-boy is on strike.

A hideous _squeal _pierced the hot dark air in this machine-room, another one of the midget-creatures talking. "_Nyo ne'smirk!_" came that same obnoxiously high-pitched voice. "_Ne'smirk, sya! Ne'smirk elkrik, erg-ach!_"

Jimmy understood what they were saying, the brain he was in doing the translation. Basically and roughly speaking, they were yelling about him not doing what he was supposed to do. They knew why he wasn't doing it. The other creatures in this room were onto his little game of imposter.

Language issues or none, all humanoids run in the same language provided that they have two or more working legs to do so. It was something that he could do which didn't require too much filtration through that other part of his mind. So run, he did.

More like, he _tried _running_. _Here he was, a human in a mutant midget-creature's body, trying to run on stumpy mutant-legs all bound up with these thick coveralls made out of some strange material like nothing on Earth. The best that Jimmy could manage was a hobbling hop-run to try and get some extra length out of his stride—his bare feet slapping the metal floor. His eyes were dead-set focused on the rust-armored door out of here, a door leading to a hallway with other doors. Some of those doors in the hall led to other worlds. What worlds? Jimmy didn't give a damn. So long as it wasn't _this _one, it didn't matter.

Jimmy-boy didn't have a chance. While everyone in this room at the moment had those same thick-stumpy mutant-midget bodies with the thick-stumpy limbs, they were a lot better at moving fast than he was. Those little dudes were on him with amazing quickness. They were also good at swinging their metal tools like weapons.

A wet _splunch, _and something smacked Jimmy in the left shoulder—the arm going limp on that side. He noticed how it was hanging kind of funny and had gone numb. Well okay, make that more numb than it was before since it was already a little bit lacking in feeling. Now that it was completely broken, that didn't matter much.

Being in this state made him oddly more tolerant to bodily damage without minding much. He could admire the fact that his left arm was busted and hanging wrong with the detached feeling of someone seeing it from the third person. His mind just registered the fact that the arm was not the way it used to be. (Oh, is that _my _broken arm? Hmm, interesting…) And to add the spice of life known as _variety, _they broke some other stuff on Jimmy too.

While he was noticing the awesome physiological change which had come about from having a shattered shoulder, broken bones and split joints, more of the same was on the way. Another one of the midget-creatures _whacked _him in the ribs—something important inside of his chest making a wet _crunch_ sound before going soft. The same was true for the other _whacks _they gave him, all kinds of truly awesome sounds of a body being smashed and mutilated.

As this was happening, Jimmy took on the strange notion that he was being treated like a pinata. Indeed, it was like this was a roomful of kids just blasting away at him. Some would argue that the creatures were doing it wrong—that there's only supposed to be only _one _kid whacking the pinata. And the one kid is supposed to have on a friggin' _blindfold. _Furthermore, those same people would say that a pinata is full of _candy, _not full of sloppy wet blobs of soft meat known as _internal organs_.

Well guess what? One blindfolded dude or dude-ette doing the work may be how _you _play pinatas in _your _world. Around here, they do things a little bit differently, _mes amis_.

_Pinatas are Mexican-Spanish, not French, _thought Jimmy from his position on the rust-metal floor… Yes, the floor, because he fell down at some point in the game. Fall down, go boom! More like, fall down and go _crunch._ All the while those short-little bastards were still at it—_hitting _and _hitting _him with their metal tools. He suspected that the body he was in now must have the consistency of meat-flavored oatmeal. Broken bones must make their efforts all the more easy. And… Hey, how is he still conscious?

That's a very good question. His chest, arms and legs were being beaten steadily into a shredded fleshy pulp with some bone fragments for variety in texture, that's true. But a humanoid creature's thinking usually doesn't happen in the arms, legs and chest. And be sure to ignore comments about a man's thinking being done below the belt. It's the _head _that matters. Speaking of which, one of those little geniuses with the tools must have thought the same thing because it raised its rust-metal tool—the tool's strange attachments looking like mismatched points on a mace—and brought it down _hard _on Jimmy's head…which split like a brain-filled melon. Gooey stuff came out. And it looked nothing like the individually wrapped treats from a glued-paper party attraction.

If it looked bad from the outside, then it was even worse for the guy experiencing it first hand. Everything…_seemed to go to a side and down, a haze of darkness and sparkles filling his vision as things began fading out. He wasn't walking away from this one. Instead, he was going away. As the hearing from his soon-to-be-corpse went off into the distance, he heard the far-off sweet voice of the dead woman. He followed the voice, down and into a distance. Roger that, over and out…_

…

_And damned if he didn't…_wake up scared shipless—jerking himself up in the bunk and looking around. (Jerking _up, _not jerking _off. _Perverts.) It was the same way he woke up after taking that night-time ride with the dead woman. Except he didn't take a ride with a not-alive lady this time. It was more like he took a ride on the wild side, the _dark side_.

Hope and darkness, good and evil, as Jimmy's mind became more coherent from that wild night-time nightmare, he had a really solid feeling of _good _and _evil_. Evil is not just the off-hand tomfoolery of a kid taking candy from a baby. Nor is it the antics of a masked guy running out of a bank with two big bags with dollar-symbols on them. That's little stuff compared to what Jimmy was worried about. We're talking about _evil, _for real_._ As in, _bring about the downfall of reality _kind of evil. Compared to that, robbing candy from babies and money from banks is small beans, _microscopic _beans. No, smaller than that… _Subatomic _beans. Maybe that dude with the money-bags is stealing to feed his family during the Great Depression, and maybe that kid snatching the candy from the proverbial baby is keeping that little 'un from developing diabetes at an early age. They're humans.

Those other things aren't. Those messed-up creatures, they were what was really evil. Those creatures wanted to make it as so all the First National Banks would crumble into ruin and all the baby cousins everywhere in all the worlds would die as conditions became too inhospitable for most life. This world would become like theirs—everything being darkened, things changing, creatures that shouldn't exist coming into existence. Darkness and madness…

As more of _them _broke into this reality, _invading _this world, they would make things happen. And if Jimmy didn't do what he was supposed to do when the time was right, _they _could very damn well win, damn it. Everything would be _damned _too, probably forever.

To think, Jimmy was sharing a cell with someone who was in cahoots with those things and their strange machines_. _It was the odd prisoner who also inhabited this cell—the one who was helping out those freaks. The odd prisoner was doing the metaphysical equivalent of saying, _Greetings, creatures of evil. Come on over. There is plenty of space to be conquered. _

Speaking of the odd prisoner, where was that traitor to humanity? Jimmy looked down over the edge of the bunk. Nope, the odd prisoner wasn't down there. He sat up and looked at the wooden chair in front of the wall covered with weird writing—the chair being empty in the gloom. Not there either. Nor was the odd prisoner on the toilet. The odd prisoner was most likely gone through a hole of a horizontal sort, not a vertical one—a hole in the wall, a hole in reality. If Jimmy had the guts to go into the hole whenever it appeared, maybe he'd be out of here too. Maybe there was a way to get that hole to open up in Vegas or something…

Yeah, right. As if he had Vegas money to spend. Jimmy knew that the odd prisoner wasn't hamming it up in that hot city of ill repute. If the odd prisoner was at any place Vegas, it probably wasn't the one on this version of Earth. He wasn't here. He wasn't there, either.

So now, what can Jimmy do? The easy answer would be to kill the mother-forker. Yet the not-so-easy part about it was _how _he could do that. A shiv could maybe get the job done_. _Inmates get shanked all the time. Smuggle some pieces of metal out of the metal shop, sharpen it on a worn-away piece of the concrete wall, wrap a strip of torn bedsheet around an end to make a handle… And there you have it—a makeshift knife to poke a hole in somebody's guts. Doing that used to be almost impossible ten years ago when the prison guards were more plentiful and more careful. But decades of tax cuts for rich folks means less money for government—as in, less money to pay prison guards. So now it's too easy. It's probably deliberately that way because dead inmates no longer need to be fed, clothed or given medical care. Fewer prisoners means fewer dollars need to be spent. Even if that meant one less jailbird, that was fifty thousand dollars less a year that needed to be spent from the state budget on this place. Easier to cut taxes, more money for rich people, it all works out.

It didn't work for Jimmy because he didn't' want the blood on his hands. Remember, he's only a _convicted _killer—not even a mommy killer because he actually didn't do the killing. He was actually innocent regardless of what that rich alcoholic's team of lawyers told the jury.

Jimmy didn't want to kill the odd prisoner or even try because the odd prisoner could do some real-life magic. That guy could conjure up some mumbo-jumbo and stop Jimmy before he even got close. He saw how the odd prisoner could summon killer creatures in the blink of an eye just to scare the squirts out of somebody.

That was just _scaring _people. Imagine how fast the odd prisoner could magic-up a weapon, like maybe a sword. Sure, and the odd prisoner could also probably make that sword appear _in Jimmy's chest. _Fatality! Flawless victory…

Okay, so it's _no _to the shank idea. In fact, don't even mention close-range killing again. That's a non-starter. He'd be a goner before he even had a chance somewhat resembling that of a napalm-dipped snowball's chance in Hell.

If not a shank, then what? How about a pillow over the face while sleeping? Duh, the odd prisoner didn't even _sleep _here. On top of that, Jimmy wasn't even sure if the odd prisoner slept at all. Even if he did, it would be the same close-range problem again—which isn't even supposed to be brought up again. The odd prisoner would wake up, do some hocus-pocus, and Jimmy would be dead. A pillow over the face is how to kill an ailing wife, not a psychopathic cell-mate who could tap into powers from another universe.

What about…an _accident_? What if something was to, uh…_happen _to the odd prisoner? Nope to that, too. In fact, screw that idea too. That's not only stupid, it's dumber than stupid. It's not like the odd prisoner got around in an automobile and Jimmy could put a hole in the brake-fluid reservoir. Never mind if Jimmy knows _all about _car accidents that kill people—like single young mothers… _Mommy killer!_

Sitting up in the bunk in the hour before wake-up, Jimmy knew that he had to stop the odd prisoner. The odd prisoner wasn't back yet. And no doubt that the odd prisoner could somehow know what Jimmy was thinking. So he would get his thinking out of the way now. Trouble is, his thinking wasn't him getting him much of anywhere at the moment. He did not know how he could stop the odd prisoner or even survive an attempt on him. Clenching his fists, squinting his eyes shut, he was hard-pressed in thought. _What am I supposed to do?_

…

2.

…

Some hours later and nine miles away, the warden was on the way. With nothing but some cocaine for company instead of the usual female escort (prostitute), the warden rode along in this limousine—going along that long forest road that led to the penitentiary. Just as this long-car went expertly along this forest road, the warden was expertly guiding a tube along the little white lengths of powder on the mirror in front of him—the mirror on top of a tray that was attached to the door. Normally, the fold-out door-mounted tray was used for plates of meals. Now it was being used for consumption of another kind.

As to how a big man in a black suit managed to keep from getting any of the white stuff on himself while in a moving vehicle, it all came down to years of practice. It also came from having a careful limo driver who knew what the boss-man was doing back here and maneuvered this vehicle accordingly. Practice, practice, boys and girls. This fat man had been doing nose-candy ever since… Well, he couldn't quite remember at the moment. It was hard remembering some things when one was in an altered state of consciousness brought about by certain mind-altering substances. It's hard to think along those lines.

Speaking of lines (heh-heh), the line on his timepiece—the platinum-metal hour-hand of his watch—was nearing the noon position. There was no minute-hand on his watch. No numbers either, just four notches at opposite sides—one for noon, one at three o'clock, one at six o'clock, and one at nine o'clock. Afternoon, dinnertime, evening and witching hour. When you're a big man in society like the warden or any other member of his family, there's no need to really know the specific minute or even the specific hour. You just need a vague idea as to what general time of day it is. Appointments? Fork that. You show up whenever you damn well please…damn it. If you were some poor schmuck like a prison guard or a (heaven forbid) janitor, you needed a very accurate watch to be at work, on time, every day, down to the minute. You need a watch had to tell the hour, minute and second, and it had better be set according to an atomic clock. All that mattered regarding the warden was that he be at certain places eventually. He felt that he didn't have to be at penitentiary until around the time that the big glowing Eye of Bob was just about midpoint in the sky. The boss-man sets the hours, including his own.

Large and in charge, nobody messes with _him. _Go wherever, do whatever, and no one was going to stop him. And had the warden not taken multiple doses of something once used as a dental anesthetic during the 1800s, he might have reacted worse to what was going to happen next.

It eventually took the warden to realize that this limousine was no longer moving. The forested scenery beyond the tinted windows was no longer being passed by. Because the passenger cabin was so well insulated and the suspension so silky smooth, it was hardly noticeable when this vehicle was moving—now noticeable with engine and wheels stopped. Somehow, he could hear the sound of the wind outside as it blew through the tall trees.

_Click-clomp. _The right-side door of this limousine opened up, and a tall tan-skinned man in black suit entered this limousine—his hair as dark as the seemingly silk-lined dress-jacket and pants he had on. Another sound of well-crafted car metal, and the door closed with him inside. He sat down in the leather seating. "Good day, warden. There is something that we must talk about."

Under other circumstances, the warden would have picked up his coke-dusted mirror from his tray and _thrown _it like a ninja-star at this _intruder. _He did no such thing. The cocaine doing its rounds through his bloodstream was making him somewhat more calm than he otherwise would be. Not calm by normal standards, mind you. That, and _something _about the intruder kept him from being violent.

Instead, the warden just became verbally violent. "_Who the Hell are you!_" exploded the warden's voice—though some would have expected the warden's big-huge _belly _to explode instead.

"That is the wrong question," said this tan-skinned intruder in the black suit, his gold-colored tie and crisp-white shirt looking extra-bright and extra-clean. It even hurt the warden's eyes a little to look. "It is more important to talk about something else." He leaned forward slightly, his dark eyes piercingly clear. "This is your last chance to do what is right."

"I'll tell you what's right," said the warden. "If you don't get out _right now_, I'm going to _shove_ one of my size thirteens so far up your ass that you're gonna taste Italian leather every day until Sunday. If you're one of those people that like things shoved up their poop-chute, I can oblige!"

The tan-skinned man in dark business-suit remained calm as a breeze. "Though you have been given the privilege of having eyes that see and ears that hear, you are blind and deaf to that which is happening. There are people who have learned to hear with good hearts and see with wise minds. It is the good in the world that will let a person see that which is wrong."

"You interrupted my ride just for some mystical wisdom-talk?" said the warden through a sneer. "This ain't some after-school program for kids. This is…"

And just for a moment, the warden thought that he wasn't actually seeing and hearing this intruder. All of that talk was just too freaky to be real. Maybe it was just his imagination was getting a little help from his chemical friends. Coke isn't supposed to do that. Unless… _Damn it, Ace told me this stuff was straight, _thought the warden.

Who in tarnation is _Ace?_ Well, _Ace _was the street name of the dude who saw to the warden's…uh, _pharmaceutical _needs. In all of his dealings with the warden, Ace said that he supplied nothing but _straight _coke_—_as in, not _cut _with any impurities other than pure white powder. Ace is the place for illegal street drugs, as it was once put to the warden.

Yeah right, as if Ace was an _ace _with telling the truth. Most all coke sold in this country is cut with something—impurities put in for value-added bulk. It works like this. Say you've got one kilo of pure Columbian snow fresh off the corporate jet. Straight up. Now what you _can _do is make that one kilo into _two _with some cheap ship. Maybe you use some baking powder. And if you're bored, you can sometimes use some ground glass. Not only that, but it's too forking easy to make one kilo into _six. _Ace knows the score. He just wouldn't want his customers knowing it.

This sounds worse than it actually is. It could be a sort of temporary act of mercy that such impurities were added for the sake of the customers. If given pure powder, a cocaine addict (like the warden) would off himself or herself with a megadose of the undiluted stuff. A dead customer is no longer a paying customer.

This time around, though, Ace's supplier had cut the warden's coke with a little something special. More particularly, the stuff used with the warden's coke was some free natural stuff from a bare-footed hippie-lady who claimed to have once lived in a certain screwed-up town a few hours' drive away from here. Gosh 'em golly… You know what town that is.

Anyway, back to the here and now—the so-called intruder talking to the warden. He said, "Like your fathers before you, you have done much evil to this land and the people who have once lived here by the many. You alone deserve the fate of an evil path. But, the people under your control do not deserve to suffer because of your wrongs." A pause. "By allowing the odd prisoner to do what he does, you are doing much wrong in this life."

_More mystical mumbo-jumbo from somebody who's probably a drugged-up figment of my tripping imagination, _thought the warden. _Straight coke, my ass. I'll be damned if this stuff isn't mixed with PCP. _"Here's what I think about you and your wisdom-talk," said the warden before forming a fist with one finger extended. Guess which finger?

The warden wasn't finished talking either. "If you think I'm going to listen to some figment of my imagination brought to life from a little dust, you've got another thing coming. No… No, I'm not going to listen. No, I'm not going to accept your groovy proposal to stop. And in case you don't understand English, _Nyet, _comrade_._ Instead, I'm gonna let the odd prisoner do whatever he wants because he can do things for _me_. He's got _magic_, dumb-ass. _Real magic, _you dumb fork. All of this mystical talking you do, sounds like you ought to know what the real stuff is, and he's got it."

Said the intruder, "I had hoped that there was enough good left inside you to do what is right. Others have disagreed. They said, you would refuse because a dark wind blows too strongly in you. Now it is true that they were right, and I was not."

"Well, fork you too, buckaroo," said the warden. "Fork you like one fairy screwed the other in _Brokeback Mountain._"

The intruder gave one more look at the warden, the intruder's eyes somehow darker than the black silk of his business suit. "You have failed yourself and all that are near to you, your friends and family. It is with some sadness and much anger that I leave you now. May the dark and final truth come before you suffer too much." The right-side car-door opened up, and he got up out of this limousine.

All full of vicious anger himself at this violation of _his _personal space in _his _limo, the trued to get up and _get at _the intruder. Yet…the warden found that couldn't get out of this soft-leather seat. Despite having multiple chins, he didn't have trouble turning his head. Turn his head all he likes, probably even spin it like a merry-go-round, but he wasn't getting anywhere if he wasn't able to get the rest of himself to move.

Oh great, too late. A final _clomp, _and the limo door was already closed—the intruder gone as easily as he arrived. (As easily as the _intruder _arrived, not the coke-headed warden.) And _now _the warden found that he could move again. His huge suit-covered gut broke the fold-out tray off of its mount as he moved to kneel on the passenger-compartment floor and press his big face against the limo glass—looking a lot like an overgrown chubby kid looking into the display case of a pastry shop. His greedy eyes wanted to see that freak.

He still didn't see the intruder. The view outside showed nothing but a view of the forest along with a whole lot of _nobody being out there. _There was no man in dark business suit walking away. Nothing but the breeze, that's what. So maybe he should close his mouth before something flies into it. Nobody wants to see the inside of that guy's mouth.

He suddenly went _slamming _back into the seat, nearly breaking his back and his neck, and he yelled like somebody with whiplash, suddenly in pain. He was not thrown into the rearmost leather seating, because that would mean something physically struck him and did the shoving. Given the warden's mass, it would take a Sumo wrestler with cyborg super-powers to give a good enough shove. Rather, it was more like the long seat slammed into him—because this limousine was suddenly moving as if accelerating to forty miles per hour from a dead stop. The warden wasn't really hurt too badly though, especially with all of that blubber acting like natural padding. Just winded.

When he eventually did feel up to it, still lying down on the big wide seating, he groped up and found the switch which opened up the little intercom speaker-system between the passenger compartment and the driver. "What just happened, you dumb turd-for-brains! Why the _Hell _did you stop for that…_mystical freak?_ If your uncle wasn't a friend of my family, I'd have your nuts chopped off and put in a pair of golf balls while the _rest _of you gets fed to livestock in Jersey! They won't find you if you're ground up and made into mother-forking _pig-swill_."

The limo driver was properly nervous in his answer. If the warden wanted someone gone, it could happen. Came the limo driver's nervous voice through the speaker, "_S-sir! I never stopped, s-swear! Please look outside! We're already here now!_" The electronic speaker did make the limo driver's voice sound a little bit funny—which was probably not nice since the limo driver was trying to be as serious as possible. He didn't want to have his nuts chopped off and end up being fed to pigs.

Angry and grunting, the warden struggled to sit up and have a look. Indeed, this limousine was already slowing to a halt at the front gates of the penitentiary—deep in the forest, in its own territory cleared of trees. It was the too-familiar sight of his small part of the family political kingdom.

Time for a little logic. If this limo did stop within such a short driving distance of the penitentiary, then it would have stopped close enough for the prison guards to see anyone or anything on foot—walking or running away. The surrounding forest is declared state property and is off limits to almost everyone. That includes any and all peasants and commoners. When they post those _trespassers-will-be-shot _signs up on trees, they mean it. Never mind if the occasional deer or bear gets blasted for being in the wrong place at the wrong time—ending up in the sights of a prison-guard's weapon, that is. And if the intruder didn't have a car…

Okay, so the intruder in the dark business suit didn't have a car. He was still _somehow _able to move super-fast without a vehicle of any sort. Heh, maybe he hopped onto a saddled Bigfoot-monster and vanished into the forest without a visible trace. Why not, since everybody knows that Bigfoot monsters have invisibility skills. Sure they do. That's how they avoid hunters. Yup. Uh-huh… And the Bigfoot monsters learned their invisibility skills and other tricks from telepathically communicating with little gray aliens. They're also the same little guys that befriended Elvis Presley. Little gray aliens, Elvis Presley, working with Bigfoot-monsters, they're all in one great big conspiracy with the X-Files subdivision of the FBI as they get around in alien spacecraft disguised as black helicopters. See, it makes _perfect _sense. Now if you believe that, please step this way. We have a snug-fitting jacket with sleeves that go all the way around, along with a very relaxing room that has nice soft walls…

"I'm not crazy, damn it! _ He was here!_" yelled the warden, his shout absorbed by the padded interior of this luxurious passenger compartment. Hmm, maybe the padding was just as soft as the walls of certain kinds of hospital rooms. And wouldn't a _crazy _person act the way that the warden was acting right about now? 

"_Of course not, sir!_" came the blurted voice of the limo driver through the speaker. "_Nobody would say that you were!_" He paused. "_The guards are coming over. What should I say, sir?_"

"Tell 'em nothing," said the Warden to the driver. "Hell, tell 'em what you're always supposed to say! No, just tell 'em I'm not feeling right." Since that was most of the truth, it was a good enough answer.


	12. Chapter 12

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 12

…

1.

…

_This was somewhere else entirely different. Not that Heather particularly noticed, with her not being awake and all. Not awake, Heather wasn't totally asleep either. Laying sideways, the right side of her face pressed to a rough and rust-metal surface, Heather was getting around to getting up_…_eventually. In that sleepy dim place between sleep and waking up, the girl just wasn't feeling up to it. Her thinking was something like, I'll get up in a minute, dad. Just a few more minutes. Not feeling too great right now… _

_Heather was having vague thoughts of her father, huh? You know, the famous writer who had to be both parents at once since mom died…before he died? We shouldn't say dying because that could mean he died peacefully at a ripe old age in a hospital somewhere, attached to ventilators and heart-lung machines and with so many tubes and wires in him that he looks like some kind of sci-fi cyborg-in-the-making. When people say that somebody died, it's just the nice and polite way of saying that they're not sure of how they met The Grim Reaper's scythe. Dying? Hells no. Harry didn't die. He was killed, damn it.._

_Dad was killed by freaks like the ones that pulled Heather into this place. And since the dad wouldn't want to see the daughter lying down on the job, Heather…_sat up. Up and at 'em, blondie. We've got twisted things to see and monsters to kill.

Heather's eyesight cleared up, the edges of a headache fading off as well. (Being yanked between holes in the universe is never easy on the ol' think-works. Imagine oneself being treated like molasses in a taffy-pull. And if you've never seen a taffy-pull, then you should get on one of those fancy-pants Internet-connected computers and have a look-see.) The girl made a face, a nasty taste at the back of her throat from breathing the air. That's because the air was different—and so were a lot of other things about this place. It was dark. Dark…and a Hell of a lot different.

An infinite darkness above, there wasn't anything in that starless and Bible-black sky that ought to be a light source. No moon, visible no stars, nothing. Instead, the light seemed to be coming from a fiery light-source from atop a building….

Now the word _building _is stretching it a little. A _building _is supposed to look like somebody can walk on in and have room enough to sit in. That huge thing of three floors in height wasn't exactly a building. Damned huge thing looked like a machine.

Across this parking lot of moldy concrete and rusted grates filling in where the concrete gave away, Heather was looking at a structure that didn't look as if it would pass any sort of state inspection for safety—not a fire chief's inspection, not the environmental protection agent's inspection, and most certainly not the occupational safety-hazard association's inspection.

For starters, the ground-floor level looked as if it was half-made out of some bad-ass metal blocks instead of one's garden-variety bricks. Okay, call them metal bricks. And from the second floor on up, the thing had huge armored-metal plates going all around—gigantic armored plates the size of highway billboards. And from the top, that's where the light to see everything was coming from—a set of six huge pipes arranged like smokestacks but with fire coming out of the top. Hmm, they can't be called _smokestacks _if they've got friggin' _fire _coming out of them instead of fluffy puff. Whatever. The flaming pipes and rusted metal plates near the top were all vertically smeared with streaks of rust, probably from the toxic rains which fell from the infinite darkness above from time to time. Thank goodness this was not one of those times. Goodness knows what the rains of this world would do to a girl's skin.

If it's not a building anymore, then we'll just have to call it a machine-building. Close enough, ain't it? Just as we can't call those flaming things on top _smokestacks, _we have to call that gigantic structure _something. _

Still sitting here and not quite panicking (yet), Heather crossed slim bare arms and stared at what had once been her apartment building. That wasn't her apartment building anymore. And Heather didn't want to call this world her home no matter how many times it kept calling her back. Calling her _back, _because Heather came from this kind of place—not that this place was often welcoming to anybody or anything that looked human. Never mind if Heather really wasn't and just looked normal for convenience's sake. The merry-go-round of fate brought her back again for yet another go around in this world. If the creatures of this place were to put out a welcome banner, it would probably read, _Welcome back, bitch. _

Heather scrambled to her feet and backed off a few steps when sounds came from behind her. They were hard and steady sounds. And here Heather was, not having prepared any sort of close-range defense for herself, not even a pocket switch-blade that used to be her standby before getting her abilities.

It was the sound of short-boots on metal-plates. The heels came to a stop. "I have obtained a health drink for you. It shall rehydrate your body and alleviate most peripheral symptoms of the transition."

"_Jeez! _Well, _hello _to you too," began Heather...before getting louder. "You creeped me out just now, you know that? Like, could you please _not _walk up behind a person unannounced? And could you try saying _hello _or at least _breathing _or_ something?_"

The synthetic girl performed three exaggerated breaths—her breath smelling vaguely like plastic—before following the second part of the recommendation. "I now say, _hello._ Is that satisfactory?"

"Sure it is, Intemelessy," responded Heather. "Now how about that health drink? I'm getting thirsty just from being here." A glance up at the raw toxic flames spewing from the top of the machine-building. "The air totally sucks."

Intemelessy reached for one of the small dark attachments on her pistol hip-holsters and reached in. Out of that small attachment came a two-pint glass bottle that was clearly larger than the storage attachment itself. "Here it is," said the synthetic girl.

Heather didn't ask how Intemelessy had done that—squeezing a pint-sized glass bottle into a square-shaped hip-attachment that was as wide and long as thumb. It probably had something with that super-technology from Intemelessy's world. And since Intemelessy's world was toast, maybe that super-technology probably couldn't exist again for a long time.

Whatever technology was used, it left the health drink slightly chilled and downright tasty. If hunger is the best sauce (to quote a certain famous French general), then thirst must be a damned good soft-drink sweetener—probably better than the artificial stuff that's supposed to cause brain cancer. Heather greedily drank the whole bottle, the liquid pulled down her throat and into her body.

It was gone in seconds. The girl then capped the now-empty bottle and gave it a toss, the bottle falling down through the metal grating which made for parts of the ground here. Wherever it went, perhaps one is better off not knowing. What's way down there in the darkness far below—be it machines or monsters, if not both—can only be imagined for now. What more mattered was dealing with what was here.

"Now I'm juiced up and ready to rock," said Heather to Intemelessy. "This is what's gonna happen next. I've dealt with this kind of problem before, and fixing it is a breeze. The thing responsible for this is always something alive…sort of. All we've gotta do is find it, and _kill _it."

Intemelessy's computer-mind analyzed Heather's statement and how it was said. Heather's voice was too calm, though her eyes widened on the word _kill_. Infrared scans and audio sensors indicated that Heather's pulse and respiration was up a little. If Intemelessy was a psychiatrist instead of a synthetic killing machine, Intemelessy would have begun speaking in a gentle and calming voice while subtly gesturing for bystanders to…slowly…back…away... No sudden movements, either.

Since Intemelessy was neither human nor a mental health-care worker, none of those things were said or done. Intemelessy was created to fight—those abilities were tempered with computerized logic. And that logic was telling her that Heather would burn herself out within nine to nineteen minutes if going it alone.

Said Intemelessy, "The endurance of your capabilities is limited at this time. I will therefore provide tactical support until contact with the primary threat. Conserving your power until the confrontation will maximize the probability of success to beyond ninety percent."

Heather put hands on jeans-covered hips. "Ninety percent, huh? What happened to the other ten percent? Lost in the dryer like half my socks?" A sigh. The girl turned to face the building. "Never mind. Let's just get in there and do what we have to do."

That said, both the living girl and the synthetic one walked right on up to the rust-metal front entrance of the machine-building. It wouldn't open at first, the rust on the hinges forming a thick layer that sealed it shut—probably because the guys in there didn't make much of getting out too often. A kick from Intemelessy loosened that right up. Then our girls were able to get in.

…

Not that anyone else would _want _to get in. If the outside of the apartment looked bad, then the inside was even worse…or even _cooler_ if one had interior-decorating sensibilities bred from listening to death-metal music. Metal, that was appropriate, because ground-floor hallway was made of the stuff. Grimy, odd-shaped light-bulbs in rusted little cages gave off dirty illumination. Rust metal boilerplate formed the walking surface, nice and solid. The walls were almost the same deal—sections of square-armor plating. Some of the metal plates were missing, dim views of pipes and grime-smeared electrical cables in there. Just a little further on through this hall were tall and rectangular sections of metal that would have been doors if this was the apartment building, or they would have been doors if they actually _opened. _Those things were bolted shut. Nobody was going in. Furthermore, nobody was getting out. All throughout was the low thrumming hum of heavy machinery working away in the depths of this inside place.

Heather began walking slowly along this altered hallway in this machine-building. Intemelessy was at her side, pistols drawn and ready. This hall was still about the same size and width as the same one in the original apartment building, but that was about the only similarity to that normal place. Heather's sneaker-clad feet made for solid-sounding footsteps, the heels of Intemelessy's bootlets just a bit higher in volume.

Even louder still was the inhuman howl of a creature on the left. "_Aah!_" went Heather, stumbling to a side and raising her hands reflexively to ward off a possible attack…from a bolted-shut metal door. That's right. The scream came from behind the doors of one of those former apartments.

"_Woohoop!_" howled the creature trapped behind that bolted tall piece of door-shaped metal. _Bang-bang, _it went, pounding on the other side of the door. _Bang-bang-bang-bang! _ Whether it was using something like fists and arms or anything like human-looking appendages, it was impossible to tell from this side of the bolted-shut door. Damned thing could be using tentacles.

Then some _other _creatures trapped behind _other _bolted-shut doors began _pounding _and _banging _away like this was some kind of demonic drum session, howling and yelling while they were at it. _Woohoop, _they were declaring. _Woohoop, woohoop! _ At some point, some of them threw in an occasional _ne'smirk. _Whatever the howling and occasional other-worldly bit of language they used, the dominant theme of this creature-concert was still _bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang... _

Intemelessy pivoted to look around. Her amplified voice carried above the noise in speaking, more like shouting, to Heather. "_The threats are sealed in. We must move on._"

"_If you say so!_" shouted Heather back, wincing and putting hands to ears because the damned noise was hurting her ears and getting on her nerves. Even with her hands being used to block out the sound, it was still just too loud.

In her past dealings with this sort of craziness, before developing her abilities, Heather had her share of scuffles with these creatures before. And without her abilities back then, the girl had to rely on solid weapons to make a creature shut the Hell up. Nothing like a sawed-off shotgun to make a monster get quiet forever. (Too bad the same can't be legally said for annoying neighbors.) Because it came down to getting down and dirty with weaponry, Heather beating and blasting the creatures with bludgeons and firearms, they also got her in return. They had clawed, tripped, bitten, licked (yuck), rammed, and more to try and take Heather down. The girl had even been shot at because some of those creatures had brains enough to use firearms. Thank goodness the powder in their weapons was so weak—the bullets not so deadly. One time, Heather had to deal with a freak that used its whole damned body to block off the only exit to a place. Of all the times and in all the places the freaks attacked Heather, this was probably the first time that they used _noise pollution _in their tactics. And judging from the raw flames coming out of the chimney-pipes that were visible from the outside of this machine-building, these jokers were probably masters of just pollution overall. And _where the fork is the way off this floor?_

Then Heather found a door on the right that wasn't supposed to be there…. Well, it _wouldn't _be there if this was still the old apartment building—which it wasn't. Heather looked at the doorknob made it turn. It swung inward.

The open door revealed a closet-like space that had a square opening. The uppermost rungs of a ladder were barely visible, darkened metal in dirty low light. No elevator, not even stairs, it really was a ladder which seemed to be the only way _down _right about now. Apparently, these creatures don't believe in handicap access. Anyone or anything in a wheelchair or using a walker to get around would be piss out. On top of that, anyone who would be feeling just a little bit _emotionally _handicapped by the sight of a dark space was also bound to get the same service or _lack _thereof. The machine-buildings of these creatures sometimes did have elevators, but finding them sometimes was just about as easy as finding a used drug-needle in a haystack—and just as safe. Good luck on finding ones that _worked_, too.

So, it's the ladder. Intemelessy went first, holstering her weapons. Her bootlets-covered feet and bare legs extended first down the rungs before the rest of her did, shorts-covered hips next, followed by leotard-covered torso, followed by her head, her hands the last thing going out of sight.

As Heather put her own feet and legs on the ladder, a glad thought went to having switched over to wearing pants more often. Gosh knows _what's _down in that darkness, waiting for a nice ripe young girl to come on down, reaching up to feel some legs and maybe grope up the skirt…

_Ick, _thought Heather before following Intemelessy down the ladder and into the darkness. If there was anything waiting to get them right away, Intemelessy was probably going to feel it first. _It must be a little easier to be an android, _thought Heather. _Never scared because emotions aren't a problem. Being almost invincible must be a nice plus, too. _

…

2.

…

Imagine a factory basement as re-imagined by psychotic freaks from another universe, and that's pretty much a start to what this area looked like…because that is what it basically is. Some folks would probably argue that the whole damned machine-building already looks the part. Nope, they're wrong. If the upper floors looked all dark and demonically industrialized, just know now that this place was more so. And it was this place that Heather and Intemelessy were willingly entering.

At least the upper hallway had lighting of a decent color. Down here, the lights were red—blood-colored illumination of a foreshortened corridor that was more shadows than light. Odd squared projections of strange machinery jutted out in places, making this already narrow hallway seem even more difficult to get through. Or it'd be more difficult for people who were bigger than mutant-midgets from an alternate reality. All throughout was the thrumming-machine sound heard from the first floor of this building. The same, yet louder down here.

Down here, where things were more dangerous-looking and mechanized. "Hope you don't get a scrape or anything," said Heather. "These guys have got their stuff set up all over the place."

"Damage due to such impacts would be unlikely. The tensile strength of my synthetic skin surpasses that of a titanium alloy in solid state," responded Intemelessy.

_Ask a robot a question, get a robot's answer_, thought Heather. "Alright. Whatever. Right now, I've got this feeling that we're getting close. Let's look around and be nosey. Any questions?"

Intemelessy didn't sound huffy or anything, but her response had the edge of something just a bit rude. What do androids care about manners? "I have no requests for additional information. My data on this category of scenario is extensive."

"Well, _gosh! _Thanks for telling me in advance!" exclaimed Heather, throwing up her hands. "Let's just get this show on the road."

So it began, the random testing of doors to find out which doors would work, which ones felt like they were locked and might work, and which doors were probably closed for good. For the record, Heather was using some of her abilities again, twisting the doorknobs by using her mind—not her hands. Some doorknobs turned, but the doors themselves weren't going to open. Intemelessy was doing the same.

About that Intemelessy… So robo-girl has _extensive data _on this kind of situation, huh? Muttered Heather, "You were born knowing everything, weren't you?"

"That is incorrect," stated Intemelessy, following Heather in her walk. "There is no single source of all data in all universes. I am to acquire information as my existence continues to improve my functionality."

"I was being sarcastic," said Heather, stopping in front of yet another door and looking at the doorknob, doing that move-objects-with-her-mind trick to make it turn. Nope, door wasn't opening. Another dud. Time to move on. "Try the rest of the ones on this side. I'm gonna give the rest of 'em a shot."

"Affirmative," agreed Intemelessy, going to the other side of the hall and stepping around bits of jutting machinery. Unlike Heather, the advanced female android known as Intemelessy had to try doorknobs the old-fashioned way—using her hands. Right hand on a door, giving the knob a twist and pull, and nothing happened. Next door, the female android did the same and got the same results. Twist, pull…and nothing. Are we there yet?

Yes, we are. _Click-clomp._ Heather managed to get one open. A rush of warm air rushed out, accompanied by even more of that thrumming machine-sound. Just one look inside was all the girl needed to show that they hit jackpot. _Got this done faster than I would've thought, _thought Heather_._ _No stupid mind-games, puzzles or anything. _"Over here!"

Intemelessy turned and strode aggressively in quickly strode in Heather's direction. "Wait a moment," said the synthetic girl. "Do not move from your position."

Since Intemelessy was made to be a fighting machine in the shape of a girl, combat-thinking was always somewhere in the computer-works of her mind. (Pay attention, folks. This is important.) Tactics, situational awareness, probabilities of enemy attack, all of that was always part of her thought processes. And it was such computerized combat-thinking telling her that the _probability of enemy attack _was getting into the danger zone right about now. Here they were in a newly established—newly altered—base of operations for the enemy, and they hadn't attacked yet. What does this mean?

"This is a trap," said Intemelessy.

"Like Hell it is," countered Heather. "If they wanted to trap us, they're too late. We already found what we're looking for. All we've gotta do is, _whoa!_"

The _whoa _came as the metal door _slammed _in front of her, metal on metal hitting with such great force that somebody would have lost fingers if they had a hand in the way. Two sets of bars _crashed _down into this basement area—one set of bars at one end of the hall, another set of bars at the other end With the door having slammed itself shut and the way back to the metal ladder blocked off, the girls weren't going anywhere for now.

_That's a new one, _thought Heather, not really shocked in the least. _Never would've figured they'd use one of their own boss-machines for bait._ _Jerks… _Heather kicked the door which separated her from the goal which was in sight not even a whole minute ago. Wreck the thing in that room, and they could've been home-free. "Just wait 'til one of them shows its butt-ugly face."

Ask and ye shall receive. Heather mentally and verbally wished for one of them to show their _butt-ugly faces_, and that was what the girl got—sort of. Our girl would soon be treated and mistreated to a visit from something that was from around here.

First, Heather heard a sound of a square metal panel opening somewhere above. Then came a nasty sound of grunting and slithering. That was what her ears were picking up. Now her eyes went to work, looking up.

Above and along the ceiling, a pale and muscular creature was pulling itself along the pipeworks above, using its two arms for mobility because it had no legs. Its huge head was turned away. _Not _turned away were the two lumps of meat which were its crusty and calloused buttocks—rough from being sat on in radioactive cages all the time. Talk about turning the other cheek.

Don't be surprised that Heather was surprised at the sight of the thing. We may have already had the displeasure of meeting one of these creatures in our own travels, but not yet Heather. (Heh-heh, _butt _not yet Heather.) And it's not every day that somebody sees a mutant body dressed in nothing but some spotted sores and bits of grime, working its way along and among pipes.

Heather's reaction was a look of surprise. Intemelessy's reaction was something else. Things were bright and loud as her nuclear-powered twin pistols fired as soon as they were drawn.

The shots holed the torso of the creature, also putting holes in the grimy pipework it used for a ceiling-mounted traverse-way. Dark fluid gushing down from blasted pipework as the creature started squealing.

Since Intemelessy's shooting didn't injure the creature's huge arms, the damned thing was able to make something like a hasty getaway—clambering deeper into the dark pipework above. Being shot twice in the same go was enough injury for today, thank-you-very-much. No way did it want to hang around (so to speak) while getting its nasty ass shot up by nuclear-powered pistols fired with robotic-girl accuracy.

Too bad for the creature, Intemelessy wasn't done killing it yet. There was no hiding from the intensely powerful blasts of her dual pistols—both pistols powered by tiny little microfusion reactors, like little pieces of the sun amplified a million times and unleashed with every pull of the trigger. You know how much creatures of darkness hate sunlight. So, it's fitting and proper that Intemelessy's creature-killing weaponry use the same kind of power used by that big bright thing in the sky during daylight. _Nuclear _power, that is. Much as people with their minds stuck in the American 1960s hate nukes, almost all life on the Earth's surface owes its existence to a nuclear furnace at the center of the solar system. Yes indeed, the sun is a gargantuan hydrogen-powered fusion-reactor that had fuel enough to blaze for five billion years so far and probably continue blazing on for a few billion more_. _Now imagine just a little bit of power contained within two pistols…

Intemelessy's shots hit and went through the target even while it was trying to hide. And we ought to know by now that _trying _isn't the same as _succeeding_. That creature just couldn't get away from Intemelessy's dual pistols. Hide fail.

Heather kept to the sides as liquid nastiness gushed down from the shattered pipework and blast-severed electrical cables dangled dangerously. Heather also avoided being whacked from above by the falling body of the creature.

When the muscular, big-headed creature went _splat _against the floor, it wasted no time in making a scene. It wriggled and squirmed, arms flailing everywhere. Heather took some steps back to stay out of the grip of those huge arms, also keeping her sneakers out of the dark fluid that came from the blasted creature's body—fluid that was nothing like the blood which splashed from the blasted pipes above. Wriggle and squirm as it did, it eventually died. Heather could sense it no longer being alive.

A thought went to giving that ugly thing a good _stomp _to make sure it was dead, but there was the issue of getting blood and fluids from the pipes on her sneakers and the rest of her clothes. (Hey, her clothes might not be the latest in fashion from Macy's, but they're still _her _clothes.) More blood was still pouring down from above. And unless there was a way out of this trap, the damage above was most probably going to cause more of the stuff to splatter down on her. Heather gave the door another try.

It opened right up. No problem. Killing that creature also killed part of the will which kept the door closed. "Let's _go_," said Heather to her synthetic female companion, entering the room which was temporarily sealed off to them. Intemelessy followed and prudently closed the door behind herself.

…

In here was an unfinished machine-room—one of those places lit with dark blood-red lights and soon to have a fully-functioning engine-machine adding to the general din. The short-little midget-dudes were working huddle-backed, their thick-fingered hands using their tools, assembling one of their engine-machines. As for the engine-machine itself, its top was off. Something was _alive _in that thing—looking like a headless, limbless meat-baby in a rust-metal cradle, the cradle in this case being the casing of the engine-machine. Want to know what some of that blood running through the pipes gets used for? Here's part of your answer. Want to know where the freaks of this place get human blood to run through the pipes? You won't be told that yet, at least not in such an obvious manner.

Whatever it was, why-ever it was, Intemelessy's answer regarding things like this was always the same—just start shooting. Went her programming, the only good monster is a _dead _monster.

Intemelessy quickly laid waste to those huddled malformed dudes in red coveralls, their bodies being blasted open and blasted back. Of course, a few of them squealed their war-cries and suicide-rushes in this direction with their strange tools raised above their nasty heads. The most successful of them didn't even make it two steps in this direction before they were made just as dead as their coveralls-clad inhuman brethren. No harm in trying? Hah, they _were _being harmed—given the kind of hurt which meant holes being blasted completely through their bodies. Trying and dying, that is what's going on here.

While Intemelessy handled the rest of the scum, Heather was free from being physically disturbed and had opportunity enough to use one of her most powerful abilities. Our girl was summoning…_the unseen servants._

A hot blast of air rushed through this room as the unseen servants became a presence. They can't be seen by most eyes, but they're most definitely there—same as before. And like all those times before, what they did was very visible…and audible.

Though they were invisible (hence _unseen_), one could hear their progress through this mid-construction machine, the heavy flapping of their leathery wings through the warm air, the heavy sounds of their clawed feet on the metal floor, the occasional rumbling growl. As they made their way toward the unfinished engine-machine and its core of living flesh, they struck aside whole trios of creatures. Some of the unseen servants rushed through the air to snatch some of the creatures in mid-air to rip them apart in some totally awesome ways.

And when the unseen servants reached the living meat-core of the incomplete engine-machine, it was like they were just getting warmed up with how they handled the midget-dudes. Now they were really getting down to business. Maybe they used claws. Maybe used appendages that vaguely resembled human hands. Or maybe some of them used vicious mouths. Can't be sure any way because, again, the _unseen servants _cannot be seen by mortal eyes. They were just very effective in ripping the bloody mess out of the living meat-core of the engine-machine which was now making a lot of noise.

The screams were not just coming from the living meat-creature but also seemed to be coming from the air, resonating with the floor, the ceiling, everything in here. That's because the meat-creature really _was _the heart of everything here. It was the thing which transformed this place was connected to it—this place being a staging area for invasion from the other world. It didn't happen here, a failed invasion.

The boss-machine was killed, its living core destroyed. With their work done, the unseen servants…_went away. _With them also went the temporary rush of increased power in Heather's body. Heather collapsed, falling down hard onto her butt, looking dazed and feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on.

That wasn't the only thing coming. Remember, this place was not yet fully made a part of the invading darkness, not fully part of that other world. Now it was going back to the reality from which it was originally taken—or _coming back _to that reality, depending on one's point of view. That return began with…_a blaze of white light. Big wailing sounds like air-raid sirens came from off in the distance and grew louder. A bright whiteness blazed out everything. Heather fell into unconsciousness, knowing that this battle was done._


	13. Chapter 13

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

"Lullaby"

by Low

Chapter 13

…

1.

…

_Heather woke up…_on the basement floor and was feeling just about as badly as one expected. Being yanked into an alternate reality through some _hole _in the universe, running around in that other world, breathing the air (and thankfully not drinking the local water), then coming back in less than a few hours, it was worse than motion-sickness and hangover mixed up in one bowl with a side-order of jet-lag,. How would _you _feel?

At least this was Heather waking up in what we would call a normal basement. _Normal, _because it was—in fact and indeed—the basement area of her apartment building. This was a short hallway of beige-painted cinderblock walls with various rooms behind painted metal doors, illuminated with fluorescent lights. Some of the rooms behind those doors were for storage of building-maintenance supplies and tools. The room at the end of the hall held the water-pump and circuit-breakers. The basement. You know, where all the cool stuff is.

And the electricity was on. Otherwise, the florescent lights wouldn't be working. Only thing that seemed immediately wrong was, the boiler room down the hall was quiet. As they say in all the cornball action movies, _too quiet. _

_Quiet is good enough for me, _thought Heather, sitting up with her head feeling like it was floating in a sea of vomit. _I feel like crap. _

When things got too bad, the girl repositioned herself as so her head was between her knees, taking in controlled breaths through her mouth. This pose made her look like a booze-hound (albeit an under-aged booze-hound), but it sure beat throwing up and smelling like one later.

This was one of those things that Heather learned to do—one of those little tricks learned because some forms of medication don't work for her. The local Rite-Aid pharmacy doesn't exactly stock anti-nausea pills for maybe-not-human girls born in alternate realities. Well okay, some drugs work for Heather—working maybe a bit _too _well. Heather once accidentally got herself hooked on some cold analgesics before realizing that there was a problem. _This is the stuff, _was her thinking at the time…until getting the shakes from not having the stuff, until Heather got over to one of the drug-treatment clinics to get herself offthe stuff. And as they say in the drug-treatment programs, you can't solve a problem unless you first recognize it.

Problems, like the location of someone who was with her not too long ago. "Intemelessy?" asked Heather, lifting her head. Now Heather was feeling too worried to be sick. Her voice got a little louder. "_Intemelessy!_"

The girl got herself up off of the floor, looked desperately around, not seeing Intemelessy anywhere. Did her high-tech bodyguard make it through the transition? For all Heather knew, Intemelessy could have fallen into some freaky place between the universes and been left stuck somewhere too terrible to really imagine, for someone to ever want to imagine.

That didn't stop Heather's imagination from giving it a shot, though—much as Heather didn't _want _to. It's like her imagination was saying, _Too bad, bitch. We're going for a ri-i-ide…_

For those who haven't been paying attention all this time—like the kid at the back of the dimly lit university lecture-hall who always manages to fall asleep during lectures (and will probably flunk out before the start of junior year)—let this be known. There are other worlds. The world that Intemelessy came from was passably normal enough, for example. However, it was certainly not our world. Our world does not have android-technology good enough to make artificial people (yet) and corporations running cities the sizes of small countries. Then there are all of the other worlds beside that which are run by folks who pretty much look like you do. Sometimes, they can't officially be called human beings because their insides are set up a little differently, but they look normal enough—people like Heather.

Now besides those worlds, we've got other universes beyond ours, other versions of this planet where there are things that don't look human, were never human, and probably couldn't give a rat's fart about human beings, period. Worlds crazier than a cockroach in a meth lab. Those are worlds run by what we would call _monsters. _

Worlds run by monsters, huh? Like that wonderfully cheerful place of darkness and rust-metal machinery? The one where all the cute creatures that are simply _dying _to meet fresh new people in fresh new other realities? Take that last example with a little sarcasm. Not to be taken with a little sarcasm is the idea that some of those worlds could be completely forked up.

As Heather looked around and just saw the plain-Jane cinderblock walls, perfectly normal walls, her imagination was running through all of that crazy imagining faster than those spaceships in that movie with guys in ballet-looking uniforms battle aliens. Other worlds… _Other worlds!_

You think that's crazy? Was this driving Heather crazy—or crazier than usual? _Hell no _and _Hell yes _are the answers to those questions, respectively. Heather's imagination was just getting warmed up_. _

Maybe there were other worlds where the oceans are nothing but churning masses of biological slime and gunk. The land-masses are ruled by tentacle-laden green squid-like beings in hive-cities. Overhead is a sky that is an eerie emerald-green—a sky that the tentacle-creatures pass through in gravity-defying ships that resemble hot-water heaters made out of polished chrome.

There could be worlds out there where the opposite was true, where the entire planet is a dry place of rocks and desert with an orange-colored radioactive sky—the creatures being some bastardized hybrid of living meat and metal machinery, living in factories and eating substances made by machines.

Who knows? Maybe those guys in that world would probably call over the mutant-midgets and squid-monster people for drinks or something. Some of them would probably have conversations like, _So… Take over any good worlds lately?_

Heather was screaming that android-girl's name all over the place and began shoving open doors, seeing the boiler room, seeing the storage-rooms, seeing a janitorial room, seeing the hall but not seeing Intemelessy. A sensible person would have been more systematic about the business, yet Heather was not at all feeling sensible. Let's take somebody's newly married wife and drop her off a cliff and see how sensible the husband is feeling. If it was a middle-aged couple that hated each other's guts, the husband would probably shake the wife-murderer's hand, but never mind that. (Wooh, doggie! 'Bout time I was rid o' that wrinkly ol' whore! Now I'm gonna collect me some _life in-sur-ance _an' marry me one o' them sweet-lookin' mail-order brides from countries where folks are so hard up fer money that they ain't got pots to piss in!) No… Never mind wives being given the old heave-ho off cliffs and the questionably legal practice of taking one's betrothed from a mail-order catalog. Where in the world was Intemelessy? In _what world _was Intemelessy?

"_I am here,_" came Intemelessy's amplified voice, stepping out from the janitorial office which Heather just looked in. "Heather, what is your condition? You do not appear injured, yet an infrared scan indicates thermal anomalies within your body. Your respiration and pulse are elevated."

"That's because I was _worried sick!_" yelled Heather, her hands clenched into angry fists. "When I call you name, I want you to come running! _Why the Hell were you hiding like that? _I Don't you know when other people might want you around and stuff?" A step closer, a lot louder. "_What's your problem!_"

Not at all affected by Heather's shouting antics, Intemelessy stood for a moment as if giving a thoughtful pause. Actually, the synthetic girl's internal machinery was doing a run-through of its workings—what computer-geeks call _diagnostics_. "All of my systems are operating within optimal levels. However, my personality emulation remains within its beta phase due to a foreshortened development. I therefore do not have a significant problem."

"That's _not _what I meant, you crazy robot!" went Heather, all loud and angry…before quickly calming down.

When Intemelessy said _foreshortened development cycle,_ that was a fancy way of saying that Intemelessy wasn't fully made. Heather remembered that Intemelessy had to be turned on before being ready, her world a wreck. Everyone that Intemelessy could ever know was killed. That's just about as bad as parents being dead before one could know them.

And here Heather was, at least having had the privilege of being raised by at least one parent. Better yet, it was a father who cared. Harry Mason was a good father. And who did Intemelessy have to raise her after they made her? Nobody. Intemelessy had nobody. Dead people have no parenting capabilities.

Thinking this, Heather was a lot more apologetic, her throat feeling thick because of all the bad feelings about her life and Intemelessy's life—about how life in general was treating them. "Look, I'm really sorry about getting pissed and all. Just please don't leave me all of a sudden like that. _Please?_"

"I shall comply with your order for the duration of this mission," said Intemelessy. "The primary factor which determines my presence in your world is that of your safety as compromised by them. This aspect of my mission makes being in your vicinity a critical factor."

_Them, _thought Heather. _Wasn't that the name of a cheesy 1950's sci-fi flick? Gonna hafta think of a better name for those creeps._ About Intemelessy being worried about safety, that sparked off a thought. When this apartment was sucked into that other world—that place which really likes to suck—everything in it was changed. Everything and everyone, that is. And when in that other place, something had also happened to the apartment's tenants.

Oh no… What happened to everyone who was in this apartment when it was sucked into that other world? Come on," said Heather decisively, making very quick strides for the stairs up out of this apartment basement level. "We've gotta check something."

…

It was as if Heather couldn't run fast enough. Moving over to the basement stairs up, getting up the stairs and moving fast, Heather was on the move. It didn't matter if it was already too damned late. What happened has already happened. Logically speaking, there was no need to run because what's done is done.

Nevertheless, Heather was moving a quickly as her lack of height allowed her. The girl was a skosh under five feet tall. Meaning, it was her not being too tall at all. Being _petite _may be cute when it comes to females, yet it puts a real damper on trying to get up some speed. For every stride that a person of so-called average height has to take in running, Heather has to take one and a half.

_Whap-whap-whap…! _Heather used her right palm to bang on the first apartment door her running brought her to. "Hey! Are you okay in there?" _Whap-whap-whap…_ Then Heather noticed that the apartment door slowly opened a bit. Come on in.

Now look… An unlocked and slightly ajar apartment door in the city is either bad news getting ready to happen or is bad news that already came to pass. More specifically, an open apartment door is an open-door invitation to muggers, molesters, burglars, bastards, creeps, freaks (the human kind, not necessarily the other-worldly kind) and other assorted undesirables to just walk on into someone's home and do whatever. And if we are talking about an open apartment door _after _the bad news already happened, it probably means that the person who used to live there is probably in no state to close the door.

Or maybe that's all just a bunch of paranoia talking. Maybe it was just a case of somebody being too lazy (duh) or too drunk (hiccup) to close the door. Maybe Heather would just walk in on someone who was looking a wee bit befuddled—probably because some skinny girl in dollar-store clothes walked in without being given permission to do so. _Oh, why'd I leave the door open, you're asking? Just wasn't feeling up to closing the door, _would be the neighbor's reply_. No worries. _

Maybe, could be, possibly…but no. Heather did _not _get the good-news side of the equation. What Heather saw inside her neighbor's apartment just wasn't on the good side of things at all unless you're one of those dudes who cheers when the monster in the horror movie makes a mess out of somebody. That's because the place really was a damned mess, a mess that used to be a pair of human beings who lived here.

There was dried gore on the floor of the living room, _all over _the floor. (Gore on the floor, ha-ha.) The walls had more blood splattered on them too, along with all the furniture in sight. And the ceiling, can't forget the ceiling…which had more of the same.

This place looked like that nutball-artist Jackson Pollock turned psycho-murder and started using ground-up human meat and apartment surfaces as the media used to handle his art. Well, heck and horseradishes. if some people can photograph crosses in urine or put maggoty meat on display in galleries, call it _art _and get paid by gullible rich people with more money than sense_, _why not?

Consider this the art of _chaos, _then. It's the art of a human being having been _obliterated _and _splattered _all over and all around. And if some of us folks don't like it, that just means that we don't have a proper appreciation for artistic tastes. Uncultured philistines… Let's just go drink us some booze and watch us some baseball on tee-vee, y'all. And guess what? We'll enjoy ourselves while we do it, too.

Heather sure as Hell wasn't enjoying this. Those big beautiful hazel eyes of hers seemed to get bigger, her hands going to her mouth, trying to keep from screaming if not throwing up. Loud sounds or vomit coming out of her mouth would be a damn sight better than _blood_ though, wouldn't it? Oh, that's right. We've already got lots of red stuff all over the place. A little more probably wouldn't do much. Neither would some mushy stuff. Let's see… Heather had cereal and bagels yesterday, so the stuff would probably end up being gray mixed in with some green.

No vomit forthcoming, Heather went to another apartment door on the first floor—which was also open and freely available for her to look inside. It also had more of the same. Same song, second verse. A little bit gorier, a little bit worse. Blood and gore on the floor, senor. Blood and gore some more. Don't have hard feelings on the stuff stuck on the ceiling.

It was the same for almost all the apartments. Never mind checking out her apartment, because Heather knew that nobody was in there _to die _when the creatures activated that machine. Her apartment just had her stuff in it. Just stuff. Stuff can be replaced. People can't. There were no other people in this apartment, not living people, not even in one piece. Those who weren't obliterated probably weren't here. And the super, that guy never seems to be around…except when it comes to rent. Or so goes the complaint. Nobody else was scampering around here like a scared girl with a synthetic female buddy, so that must mean that the death-rates were almost total.

To paraphrase a writer who worked in the same genre that Heather's dad used to dabble in, _scampering _is a waste of energy. Running around, not getting useful things done, that is _scampering. _Heather stopped scampering. The girl went back to her apartment to call the cops even if those guys weren't always at the top of the game…which was why Heather had that detective agency on tap to deal with possible trouble instead of the local constabulary.

…

2.

…

If this was a horror movie, the arrival of the police at sunrise would be the signal to the audience that means the show is over. The cops are here. Civilization is restored. All the monsters are long gone, and everybody can live happily ever after. Roll the credits and play the mood music. Yeah, then the audience can go back to blissfully, ideal lives of sitting deep and comfortable in gentle suburbs. Thank goodness _we _don't live in a nightmare like a horror movie.

But guess what, boys and girls? The pol-pols arrived in their neat and clean black-and-whites, but this story really isn't done yet—not really. Some of you can just walk away right now with the knowledge that Heather is safe, that the invaders were thwarted from using the apartment for an invasion staging-area, that the city was not going to end up like Intemelessy's world. Walk away if you want, but we've still got a madman out there somewhere who wants to put an end to all the suburbs, all the cities and all the movies for good. Again, walk away if walking is what's on your mind. You'd be walking away at the wrong time, though.

Heather was back in her apartment—keeping company with a police detective who dressed to the nines but kept asking some pretty stupid questions. They weren't stupid in the _I-can't-tie-my-own-shoelaces-'cuz-I-never-graduated-kindergarten _sense, they were more stupid in the sense that it was as if the detective was having a hard time believing the Hell apparently happened to almost every inhabitant of this building—everyone except Heather.

Heather didn't mentioned Intemelessy to the cops. Intemelessy, who was actually down the street and at a bar, probably pretending to drink and keeping the locals intrigued. Better there than here, because the cops would probably have a million questions for a strangely dressed girl with nuclear-powered pistols holstered to her hips and a glowing knife-thing strapped at her back. Weirdoes show up at city bars pretty often. Take those college-kids who like dressing up like their favorite foreign cartoons, for example. What do they call them? _Cosplayers?_

Said and asked the police detective, "So you woke up and found the remains of your neighbors… In their homes?" He glanced down at that little notepad of his before again meeting Heather's annoyed gaze.

Heather smiled before answering, amusing herself with the idea of that the detective was really drawing pornographic stick-figures in that notepad instead of taking notes. _Those would be some pretty kinky lines, huh?_ "Yeah. That's pretty much it. Don't forget the part about the weird noises. Kinda like this. _Bang-bang-bang!_" Heather balled her right hand into a fist and began hitting the table, making the noise with her mouth too. "_Bang-bang-bang!_" _Bang-bang-bang!_

And just as expected, the detective looked a bit disturbed at the loudness of the sound. Correcting his facial expression and posture back to the trained-professional look, he resumed the questioning. "Did the banging sound muffled in any way, as if they occurred indoors? You're the daughter of a famous writer. Have you ever received any threats on your life? Bomb threats, for example?"

"Oh, _sure!_" went Heather, sounding too bright and cheerful. "People send me death threats all the time. I collect 'em like Pokemon cards. You know, the ones with the little…_monsters? _If you wanna trade some time, let me know. Death-threat letters, I mean. Not little monsters." Thinking, _I've never run into a pikachu in real life, but a few more trips to that screwy town ought to turn up something that looks an awful lot like it. _

"Please try be serious, Heather," said the police detective. Since Heather is still a teenager at the ripe young age of nineteen and still looks young enough to be jailbait, it _must _be okay to call her by her first name, right? (Heh, say that to a woman in a Westernized country and get ready to run.) "I can understand that you have been through a very frightening experience, but we still need some very important information about the bad thing that happened."

Damn, the dude was even talking to Heather as if this girl was a _little _girl. Don't think that Heather really happy about this. The amount of heated anger in her mind could categorically fit somewhere between _lawn-chair in Hell _and _thermonuclear detonation._ Vague images of the police detective ending up like slaughterhouse meat flittered through Heather's mind, along with the various ways that the meat could be prepared for a feast at the zoo. Heather was seething, but decided to kill 'em with kindness.

So the girl put on this big phony smile, tilting her head to a side. "_Tha-a-anks…_" Putting her head up again, "I'm really glad the professionals are getting the job done right." Two thumbs up. "Good job on solving the case, dude!"

The police detective gave an angry shake of his head. Bingo… "Look! I'm going to be brutally…honest…here!" He emphasized those last three words with angry taps on the table. "We'd like nothing better to do than take you downtown for questioning instead of leaving you in your nice and cozy apartment. Since you were at the scene of the crime when it happened, _as it happened, _you'd _normally _be the number-one suspect." He raised a pointer finger, indicating the whole number that comes after zero. "_Number…one…suspect.._" Finger down. (Never mind if Heather wanted to show him two fingers of her own, one on each hand. You need not be told which fingers they are. Now, back to the pissed-off police geek's rant.) "But then the police chief got wind of you being involved, since you live here. And because the police chief always has an ear to the mayor's policies, you're being given the VIP treatment. Your father's fame alone puts this town on the maps of some pretty high-up people from banking, from New York, probably even Los Angeles. We also know that you've got more money nine times over than the municipal government even if you do live like a hood-rat. So you can get away with murder if you want. All you have to do is hide behind a team of lawyers while the mayor gets us off of your case!"

Heather basked in the glow of victory from having royally pissed off the police detective. More basking could come later because there was still the issue of getting this useless guy out of her apartment. Useless, because the other police were probably already getting started on the paperwork. _This _guy here was just wasting her time with a million questions.

"You just don't get it, do you?" asked Heather. "No… It's more like you don't _want _to get it. You saw what happened. All of my neighbors have to be scraped off of the walls. What, do you think I went to everybody's apartment with bombs hidden in brownies, then blew 'em all up when I was far away enough? You've probably never seen anything like that before. Probably makes you feel all sick and stuff too. But it's real. _It happened_." At this point, the girl leaned back and crossed slim arms. "Now it's your job to explain it in some way that makes some kind of sense. "

Not that Heather was a writer herself, other than writing in her diary, yet the girl knew to pick her words very carefully. It would be completely ape-ship crazy for her to tell the police detective all of the truth. Heather wakes up, everybody's dead, that's true. Also true, a bunch of butt-ugly bastards from beyond were planning on invading this world—invading all the worlds. Some monsters in a giant truck delivered a huge machine that sucked this apartment into an alternate reality…

Never mind it. Heather didn't say a thing about any of that madness to the police detective. Heather had experienced enough madness to last her a few lifetimes, and there was no sense in sharing.

At some point, the police detective shut his notepad and shut his mouth. "Don't leave town," he said before he got up to leave, sound like every clichéd detective in every cornball crime-drama ever made. Heather regretted not seeing what the police detective actually wrote or drew in that little notepad.

…

Later, Heather was sitting in her room—perched on her favorite soft-cushioned tall stool, a book in front of her atop the raised hobby-table. Atop the hobby-table, along with the book of course, there was a big mug of chocolaty coffee in reach, two cloth-dolls near the edge and propped against the wall. The radio was tuned to a local station that always played cool and interesting music. Occasionally, the girl would sip some of the chocolaty coffee from the big mug on her—one hand on the book being read while the other brought the delicious drink to her lips. Turn the page.

Of all the rooms in the apartment, this one was the most comfortable. It was what Heather did after work to chill out, back when Heather still had to work, when her dad wasn't making much money from his books. When her father was still alive, that is. Funny how the works of some people are worth more when they're dead. Her neighbors, dead and gone.

Earlier, Heather was hearing the sounds of people coming back to their apartments from work and not liking what they saw—called back from work because the police told them what happened, the police being done with the place. The neighbors who were still in school wouldn't be told until _after _school—because the police did not want teenagers and such in school causing a scene and disrupting the educational environment. (Never mind how disrupted the students' lives would be when they found out.)

In all the detective movies and in all the books, the police are supposed to seal off crime scenes for days at a time. Not in this city. The police spend a few hours to get their evidence, they have certified people clean up the place as so nobody gets sick, and _then _they call the relatives. (Given how low-budget the municipal government is because of all the tax cuts, the locals ought to be lucky that they don't get stuck with the crime-scene clean-up bills.)

There were still distant sounds, muffled sounds of out-loud yelling—followed by the quieter sobs. Other voices comforted them. Even if those others were hurting themselves, they tried.

Heather didn't want to hear it. _Damned cheap-thin walls, _went a thought. _Walls so thin people would probably fall through if they leaned on them hard enough._ Closing her bedroom door didn't work. Turning up the radio, that didn't work either. Somebody upstairs stomped in angry misery. Time for some serious reality-blocking equipment.

There was some wine in the fridge—despite the fact that Heather was still two years shy of the legal drinking age and all. (Hey, when you're rich, people sort of look the other way on some things—wink-wink.) But that would mean Heather would have to leave her bedroom, traipse on out to the kitchenette and get the stuff. If Heather was still a smoker, one long drag on a cancer-stick would really settle her nerves. No to that, too. Just _no _to everything for now, in fact.

Putting a bookmark in the book being read, Heather closed it before getting some headphones out from a drawer. These were some huge and serious-professional things—the kind of _noise-cancellation _headphones that block out most all outside sounds while being capable of delivering music in surround-sound. They cost a pretty penny. However, Heather had lots of pretty pennies in multiple bank accounts. Too bad, not even all of the pretty pennies in all the banks can bring dead people back in this world. Not her dad, not those killed neighbors, not Douglas, not anybody.

Now comes the breakdown. Feeling a hot flush coming to her face and her eyes blurring over, Heather quickly plugged the surround-sound headphones in her dollar-store stereo set still on the hobby-table. The headphone cord was extra-long and allowed her to crawl into bed and curl up with the things still covering her ears.

Lots of songs played on the radio, songs from the local college station. College stations, whenever they're not covering the local sporting events, they tend to play some good music from artists that not too many people have heard. That's because the Disney-pop mainstream artists are too busy drowning out everyone else. Nah, Heather wanted her kind of music. Small comfort, yet it was some comfort. Went one of the songs on the radio, through her earphones…

_Toss over_

…_and turn._

_Feel the spark _

…_don't let it burn._

_We all want._

_We all yearn._

_Be soft_

…_don't be stern._

_Lull-l-l-a-by…_

_Love's not supposed to make you cry._

_I sang the words, amen._

_I…sa-a-a-ang…_


	14. Chapter 14

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 14

…

1.

…

How one says things started to go wrong depends on one's point of view. From the perspective of the prison guards (before they were slaughtered), they would say it began with the electricity getting screwy. Or if one asked the prisoners themselves (most all of whom were also going to get slaughtered), they would say it began when weird shadows began appeared in corners of their cozy little prison cells—among other things.

It wasn't just the shadows of things that weren't there. The prison guards started hearing things too. Laughs coming from the drains in the wash-sinks, gurgling sounds coming from their toilets, creepy stuff like that. Some of the prison guards even saw…_faces. _The walls of the prison cells were taking on dark blotches that formed some pretty ugly mugs if you stared at them.

Now some of the prison guards started hearing this and having a look around, coming to find out that the talk—which would otherwise be considered crazy talk to those not from this penitentiary or those unfamiliar with the doings of a certain fog-enshrouded abandoned town—had some basis in reality.

Take what was happening in cell 6-C, for example. Like all the cells in this joint, it was supposed to have two inmates—bunk over bunk. If this was California or New York, there'd probably be four or six squeezed in there, trying to keep from accidentally elbowing each other lest somebody get pissed off and decide to start shanking everybody in sight. There were supposed to be two prisoners in there. Now there's just one. And no, this is not the cell of the odd prisoner, where the before-mentioned creep could mosey on out any time he conjured up some of that good ol' hocus-pocus.

Meanwhile, the other guy left behind in 6-C was screaming his head off about other lands in other worlds, ranting about green-cloaked robots armed with light-sabers and riding on horseback. What is this, _Star Wars _meets _Dungeons and Dragons_? Since the guy wouldn't stop screaming and started banging his head against a wall (_get them outta my head and make 'em shut up _he was yelling), he had to be taken down to the infirmary—the suspicion being that he was having a bad flashback from having lived in the 1960s. Dude, you haven't _lived _back then until you've had something to _expand _your consciousness. And if you took a hit of something that made it seem as if your shirt came to life and wanted to drink your soul through the pores of your skin, so be it.

Should've heard what the guys in the next-door prison cell were saying earlier. You know, before almost everyone was slaughtered later? Anyway, the inmates in the prison-cell adjacent pointed out this gritty dark patch on the dull-painted concrete right-side wall of the cell. This was one of those cases where people were seeing faces—things that aren't supposed to be there. See that? Look at the wall. It's really a _face. _There's the forehead, kind of _sloping_. Now follow down a little bit. There's the set of _eyes_—sort of on the sides, like it's got a _snout. _Hey, a face isn't supposed to have a _snout_. That's not a human face. That's a _demon. _Sure as angel-piss comes down from on-high every time the mayor gets re-elected, that face in the wall must be straight from the halls of Satan's domain.

One pre-slaughtered prison-guard decided to _not_ believe some of what he was hearing. He saw the patch on the otherwise nearly invincible concrete wall and didn't see the face of a demon. That's just crazy. Nah, it looked more like the face of a lizard-man.

This prison-guard walked on to other cells but not before telling the remaining prisoner in cell 6-D to calm down. Shut up, or he'll get an injection of something cheap with a lot of side-effects—some of them probably permanent—that was going to _make _him calm. Demons, hah.

A lot of other prison guards were also doing a lot of walking because lots of cameras were just not acting right. The cameras, those things just weren't cooperating. Those electrical problems, maybe. Or maybe it was because those low-budget things were originally installed around the time when remote cameras were first put onto the market. Yeah, the maintenance guys do a great job in keeping those things running most of the time, even if those ancient devices ought to have burnt out about ten years ago if the documentation was correct. Those cameras are _old. _

Old…but cheap. Replacing the cameras would cost _money. _As long as those cameras are still up and running, they're _free_—minus the cost of electricity and spare parts imported from Singapore. Damned cheapskate government bean-counters always go for the cheap stuff even if an extra quarter-penny rise in the income taxes could fix a Hell of a lot of problems.

Well, why aren't the maintenance people around? Pat yourself on the back for noticing it was said that the cameras weren't working _right._ (Don't pat too hard, though. Spine's back there. Might hurt yourself, and we can't have that.) It was not said that they weren't working, period. Many security and surveillance cameras were still on, all the pretty lights light up just like they should.

The devices were sending signals down to the monitor-stations, granted. But it's like those things were sending video feeds that were just plain _wrong. _The monitors would start showing gray shapes going across the front of the camera's view before fuzziness starts messing up the image completely. Straight-up analog signals, that's how old those cameras are. If it was a digital camera, there would probably be a big blue screen with a _no signal _message. Not with these things. Then there were the screens showing something else. Not a big blue screen. More like a big black screen with something big and red on it.

It was hard to get a really good look at it, because it would only flicker there for a sliver of a second. That is long enough to get a glimpse and an impression, not long enough to do a whole art-gallery perusal of it. What the prison guard had to do was go to the videotape recording (_yes _they still use video tapes), slow it down a lot and pause it exactly when it happened.

It definitely wasn't just the cameras acting up. The odd prisoner was definitely up to no good again. The prison-guards knew when to ignore some things off as random day-to-day nonsense and when the _nonsense _was actually some kind of _sense_…directly caused by a certain infamous inmate up on the third tier of a certain wing of the penitentiary.

…

"Yeah… Gotta definitely say it's him," said Pullahein, giving a nod to the circular image on the video screen that was switched to playback.

It wasn't just a simple circle. The symbol had another circle within the circumference, three more circles arranged triangular-fashion within. Smaller symbols were arranged within the circle. There was only one prison guard here who knew what those symbols meant, and he—Pullahein—wasn't going to offer translation services. Yet even not understanding the language, just looking at that thing made the prison guards get this feeling that something was going wrong in their world. The other prison guards looked grim, their faces looking even shadowed by the low lights of this monitor room.

"Don't gimme them looks," said Pullahein. "Them faces of yours are tellin' me you wanna make it as so the odd prisoner can't cause trouble ever again. Some of y'all wanna take 'em to the incinerator buildin', turn 'em into hot smoke outta the chimney an' cool ashes on a cart. We can't do that." He smiled, his voice temporarily becoming free of his thick regional accent for a moment. "It's against the rules."

"I say we show this to the warden when he shows up," said the prison guard at one of the control consoles of this monitor room. "This is the clearest sign of trouble from the odd prisoner we've seen so far." That prison guard turned his head slightly to the left, looking at one of his comrades in particular. "Wright, you weren't here for too long, but you ought to know that this is the first time the odd prisoner has been _this _obvious. He's always been on the sneaky side. That symbol is one of the same things in some of the religious books he borrowed from the library." As in, the penitentiary's library. Yes, prisons have libraries. It's probably more proper than having a brothel. "The odd prisoner is the only one who signs out those books because they scare all the other inmates. And the only way the odd prisoner is able to do _this _is through some kind of tampering. We can use this for state's evidence."

"We can't do that," said another prison guard. "You know how it is. We try to talk to the governor's office, and the governor will be all over us. Then the warden will be all over us, calling us crazy."

"I gotcha… The governor's a first-cousin to the warden," confirmed Pullahein. "Cousin is gonna believe cousin 'fore governor believes guards." He paused, taking on a tone of voice like a grown-up counseling a group of youngsters who are starting to skirt the roles of a game they're playing. "Y'all listen good, now. I'm gonna be on board for bringin' this directly to the warden's attention, _but that's it_. Things have gotta play out the way they supposed to be past that point. We ain't gonna have funny business by makin' the odd prisoner have an accident. _We _play by the rules. That's the way things have always been. That's the way things have gotta be. We all gotta play our part. _According to the rules._ You got me?"

Maybe because Pullahein was speaking like a sober grown-up who was lecturing some youngsters, one of the prison-guards spoke out of turn with a question—just like a little kid. "Why?" asked that random prison-guard in a corner. "Seems to me like the odd prisoner is getting away with doing too much, and our hands are tied by the rules. If a little funny business gets the bad guy killed, nobody would care. Seems to me that if we got rid of just this one guy."

"_Shut it!_" yelled Pullahein. That prison-guard who made the commentary did shut it—jerking back like someone who was too close to a firecracker. Everybody shut it, with only the faint hum of the analog-style video equipment as an audio background. Continued Pullahein, "Seems to me like you ain't been _around _long enough to get the big picture. That-there odd prisoner, he's not the main piece of the picture. He's a decent-sized piece, I'll give you that, but he _ain't _the whole-entire thing. He's part of somethin' else that's goin' on. Just like _we _are part of somethin' bigger. Bigger than all of us in this-here room, bigger than this whole damned penitentiary, bigger than the state. That's why we gotta play by the rules.

"Goes like this. Them bad guys, they wanna break the rules. That's 'cause if they break enough of 'em, they can start takin' over. You know them freaks that we gotta kill with weapons an' cook in the incinerator after? They don't belong. They broke the rules and came here. If the universe and reality was decent, if everythin' was workin' the way it's supposed to work, they wouldn't be in our world. _It's against the rules._

"The bad guys can break the rules 'cause them guys are the bad guys. But with us bein' the good guys, we can't. And if we do break the rules, we'll be like the bad guys by addin' to the break-down of _everything_. Pollution, that's what the bad guys are."

Listening to Pullahein, Wright thought of something that he heard during training. One of the personnel responsible for training prison guards had quipped, _I'm not a bad guy. I just do bad things._ The clincher of saying something like that was, if someone does bad things, that makes him or her bad to everyone else but the bad guy. Bad guys never think themselves as being the bad guys. They think they're the good guys—doing what they have to do. "I can understand your point," said Wright.

"Good! There's _one _guy I done saved from the fall of humanity," said Pullahein, giving a sweeping look around at the rest of the prison guards in here. "Are the rest of y'all with us? Some bad stuff is gonna start happenin' real soon. Lots of y'all think yer hot stuff with marksmanship an' tactics? Let's hope so, for _everybody's _sake."

_Bzzt!_ One of the monitors let off a spray of sparks before going out like a light, a puff of grayish and toxic-smelling smoke wafting out of it. It so happened to be one of the monitors displaying that red circular symbol. If the monitor was a human being, one could say that the monitor _gave up the ghost. _And like a ghost, the puff of gray smoke wafted up toward the dimmed lights of this monitor room.

Something about that smoke... "Hey," said one of the prison-guards, looking up at the offending miniature indoor cloud from the toasted insides of the dead video monitor. "Somebody else tell me you hear that."

What was there to hear? With everyone in here getting quiet… Yes, _now _Wright could hear it. He could not help _but_ hear it.

It…was this far-off keening sound, mixed in with a distant rush of wind. The sound was like something lost and far off in a night-time wind or something. But there was no storm outside of the prison at this time. Even if there was, no way could wind or rain even get close to leaking through the mighty fortress-grade concrete and metal which made up the walls of this massive penitentiary. In fact, one rumor talked about this place being strong enough to withstand the nuclear blasts of World War III. So _why _was there a sound of some far-off high-pitched _crying? _Where the Hell was it coming from?

That's why some of the prison guards were looking _up. _The faint and far-off sound seemed to be coming from the gray puff of smoke… No, it was more like it came _through _the smoke. That thin little puff of stuff couldn't itself contain the suffering and misery he was hearing.

It was an opening through which Wright could hear things. All the sadness and misery of having _failed, _of finally having everything come to an end, _that _was what he was hearing. How easy it would be to just _give up. _Why not? He'd have a very hard time getting work as a prison-guard elsewhere, but anything but this had to be better than dealing with things that are only supposed to exist in sleep-time nightmares and waking imaginations of little kids that are scared of the dark. Real-life monsters, not even soldiers in the Army have to face _that_…as far as anyone outside knows. Even the Army would be preferable to this craziness. Sure, then Wright could move to another town, some place nice and comfortable—some place where the only things scampering around at night were fuzzy raccoons from the woods. Leave crazy business like this far behind for people crazy enough to handle it. He could live pretty well and…

"_Don't listen to that!_" yelled Pullahein, sounding angry while most everyone else was feeling a little relaxed and somehow a lot sad. Pullahein strode over to where the puff of smoke had wafted up near this monitor-rooms ceiling and began waving his right hand at the thing.

The distant keening sound from through the puff of smoke became just a little bit louder. It was as if the stuff of the smoke was _alive. _Being alive, the thing of smoke didn't want to be killed and it resisted being dissolved for a little bit. But dissolve it did, not able to stand up to the aggressive waving of Pullahein's fanning right-hand. With it being gone, the distant sound of a call to surrender went with it.

"Stuff like that can mess up yer head if was stronger," said Pullahein. "Sometimes, mess you up in ways that _no_ doctor in this world can fix."

Wright caught the wide-eyed look of another prison-guard, seeing his own fear reflected in another man's face. Though he no longer heard and felt that lulling call for surrender to everything, some last bits of consideration about leaving did cross his mind. And that was it.

…

2.

…

Days can seem to be pretty damned long in prison some days. Sure, there is the television-equipped rec room for those on good behavior. Television sucks though—too many damned commercials. And maybe if they didn't have twenty minutes of commercials for every ten minutes of show, which was mostly repeats nowadays, maybe the television networks wouldn't have all started going _broke._ Forget about games like ping-pong or pool in prison because there are _no _games like that allowed in the big-house. Inmates allowed porn, though. (The geeks in the psych department said that if the pedophiles and other sex-criminals in the prison population can get their jollies off of full-grown women instead of kiddies or animals, then it'd be progress.) Porn and television aren't ways of making a day get along any faster—not that it matters when an awful lot of the locals are looking at a few decades' worth of days in this place. Then there are the lifers, people who aren't ever going to leave short of a trip to the morgue.

If the days are long sometimes, then the sunsets seem even longer at times. Sunlight rides low in the sky, turning the sky into dying shades of gold and crimson, casting everything in a long glow. Prisoners aren't allowed to see sunsets. That's because they're locked up inside before it gets too late into the day. Best to have them inside before they get starry-eyed notions of slipping out when that great big heat-lamp in the sky is no longer making everything so _visible_. Or maybe they'll see a sunset, start thinking about their girlfriends of twenty years ago and get even more anxious to make a break for it.

_When they do try, there will be no less than four rifles ready to put holes in their backs, _thought Wright as he walked the walled-off perimeter of the prison yard. For those that don't know, a prison rec yard is not just a bigger and slightly less-happy version of a grassy residential yard. It's _not _the sort of _yard _that comfy suburbanites know all too well. There is _no _grass here. (Not even the smoking kind, so don't even think about it.) Grass means dirt, and dirt is diggable, which is why things are as hard as they are. This massive area is hard pavement for a surface and great big concrete walls all around.

Even with mighty walls that stand tall, no reasonable chance of jailbirds burrowing like gophers to escape like rats, prison guards had to give the rec yard regular inspections after all the inmates are indoors…which was why Wright was out here. Officially and obviously, Wright was looking for what the training people said were _signs of potential egress_—the fancy-pants way of saying that he was looking for things like hidden holes in the ground, chunks of wall where prisoners were trying to break out, so on and so forth.

They could try, though. They could try. Again class, what do we know about _trying _versus _succeeding?_ When Wright thought _four rifles, _Wright was right. Four rifles held by four guards posted at any tower at any time, they kept prisoners from escaping too. Then there are the lengths of razor wire—it being so sharp that not even the military is allowed to use it (Geneva convention). And _then _there are tracking dogs with noses so mighty that they can smell a fifty-year-old Twinkie miles away…still in its plastic wrapper…underground…in a nuclear bunker…during a thunderstorm…at night…even if the thunderstorm was to be caused by nukes. (That bit about smelling things at night might not matter since it's noses being used instead of eyes, but never mind.) Now in _addition to that_—in addition to tall walls (zoom), rifle-bearing prison guards (bang), razor wire (slice), super-nosed dogs (woof-woof)—there is the surrounding forest to keep the inmates in. It's so much wild forest all around that it must hold every wild man-eating animal imaginable…and then some. Prisoners might hear some of this and say that this isn't cougar country, but would the want to take that chance? Now throw in the freak factor of this institution being in the same state as that _screwed-up town _where nobody lives anymore, how maybe parts of the surrounding forest touched parts of _that town, _and maybe talk of animals in the forest being with things that might not just be _animals _didn't sound so crazy.

All of that, and a prisoner might want to break _back _in _break back in _after trying to escape. With the economy the way it was and nobody out there getting a job at any time unless they know relatives of important people, being in the slammer was pretty cushy. At least they give you free food, free medical care, a roof over your head and a bed to sleep in. On the outside, they government and corporations would just as soon let a man starve to death on the streets before spending anything on…_welfare. _That's the American way, after all—courtesy of all the wealthy politicians. Work or starve.

Something was wrong. No, not something with politics. There's always something wrong with politics—politics wouldn't be as fun if things were always going right. No, it was something else. Something felt wrong.

Wright couldn't _see _what was wrong. So far, nothing seemed wrong with these big-huge outdoor concrete walls. He couldn't hear anything wrong. Maybe the distant sound of some machine-noises on the breeze, but that was all he could get. And because he did not have a mighty-dog nose, he could not _smell _if something was wrong.

He was having what they call a _gut _feeling, even if he was feeling it in his head instead of his body-cavity. It's like how Auntie Mae claims to be able to predict tornadoes by how her dentures are feeling in her mouth that day or how Grandpa Joe used to say that his left knee acts up for the same thing. Truth is, Wright didn't have an Auntie Mae or Grandpa Joe. Yet he nevertheless must have shared something like their genetics given what he was sensing. Something is not good about this situation—not good at all. Something is happening. Exactly _what _it was, he couldn't quite say at the moment. And it'd probably take an expert to tell him.

"Hey Wright!" came a familiar voice from across the prison-yard pavement. Though the hard surfaces would normally make an echo-riddled mess of anyone else's voice, especially with no great big cloth-covered bodies of jailbirds to act as dampeners, that voice somehow came through the air pretty clean and clear.

Wright looked up from eyeing the pavement to see Pullahein, already quickly walking over to here. Though Wright knew that Pullahein was a senior prison guard—also close to being a senior in the age sense—Pullahein nevertheless moved at a pretty decent stride as if age wasn't slowing him in the least. _Age's nothin' but a number, _was what an older relative once said to Wright. From the looks of Pullahein, Wright hoped that would be the case for himself.

Pullahein was here soon enough, standing at conversation distance. "You got the time?" he asked Wright.

Wright noticed that Pullahein had a watch strapped to his own wrist. Still, Wright checked his own watch. "Yes, sir. It is 1500 hours." Military time, because prison-guards are trained in a somewhat military fashion.

"Good," responded Pullahein. He glanced up at the deepening tones of the sky above. "Are you noticin' the condition of the sky at this _particular _time?" His accent made the word _particular _almost sound like _per-tick-u-lar_.

Since Pullahein had a working set of eyes in addition to a functioning watch, Wright quickly got the idea that this deliberate line of questioning was going somewhere important. So Wright looked up at the sky for a moment. He would be told in good time what this was all about. "It is sunset, sir."

"Sunset today is supposed to be at 1836 hours, given where we are, the season, and the local geography," stated Pullahein. "It ain't supposed to be _this _early. I done checked the paper to be sure." He smiled. "Ah well! What's some desk-jockey journalist know 'bout astronomy anyway? Them idiots make more typo-mistakes than an intern-doctor after three all-nighters in a row and three shots of whiskey in 'em."

Though Pullahein was smiling and joking, Wright was in no mood to do the same. Wright didn't notice what was wrong with this picture until it was pointed out to him. Plain as the sky above, hiding right in plain sight, and here he was—feeling in his head that something was wrong but too stupid to notice a specific sign of _what _was wrong. It _was _pretty darned weird how the sun seemed to be setting too damned early. No, screw that. _Too _weird. Too weird to be acceptable.

Wright was suddenly feeling a little sick. Sunsets that were too long and came too early, along with the other things that have been happening, and Wright quickly thought about one man—the odd prisoner. Too powerful…

"Don't worry about it," said Pullahein. "Ain't a big thing. Just a local event. Them pieces of livin' office furniture callin' themselves _reporters _ain't gonna notice the distortion from where they at. That's 'cause they ain't experiencin' it. Nobody's gonna call in anythin' about the sky getting' darker much earlier than usual."

"We have to stop him," said Wright—yet not saying anything after that. _The rules must not be broken. _

"He will be stopped," said Pullahein. "Not the right time, though. Oh, I can tell that you're just _itchin' _to make the odd prisoner one dead dingbat. I ain't told the other guards this, but I'm telling _you _'cause you need to know. What if I was to tell you that shootin' the odd prisoner would be worse than shootin' the outer-shell of a nuke warhead? He's got a _lot _o' power goin' through 'em. And the comparison is more than a wee-bit apt. 'Course, you can't detonate a nuke by just hittin' or droppin' the thing. A nuke is set off with a trigger-mechanism that's gotta go off the right way. Still, you hit the wrong set of wires and… Well, then you won't be 'round to tell about what done happened."

"You mean that he was _that _powerful for _this _long?" asked Wright. "And they just left him in a typical penitentiary? Why doesn't someone from the federal government know about him? The federal government could figure out what he's doing and put him in a place where he can't be a threat."

"Ain't gonna happen," said Pullahein. "Ain't a single bureaucrat gonna believe anythin' about anythin' just yet. Remember what I said 'bout desk-jokeys? Ridin' high in their overpaid office-chairs, they ain't gonna rock the boat and make waves. Nah, the typical desk-jokey bureaucrat would just ask if your head's screwed on tight. If you bug that same bureaucrat again, they're gonna fire you faster than you can say _whistleblower._ So sorry, m'boy, but Uncle Sugar's G-Men won't do squat 'cause the Lord-High Muckety-Mucks, those in the Official Bureau of Go Shoot Yourself and Leave Us Alone, they won't cut orders for action 'round here until somethin' _big _happens."

_Uncle Sugar_, as in _U.S. Government, _thought Wright. _So much for the cavalry._ "If you couldn't stop him all this time safely," he began, "How are you so calm about this? And is there a chance that we _can _stop him soon?"

"Can't tell you," said Pullahein. "Notice I done said, _can't _tell you. Not _won't_. Meanin', I ain't quite figured that it's time for him to get his comeuppance. But he will, _believe _me." He turned to walk away—yet not leaving before saying one more thing. "They done hired you 'cause the _last _prison guard in your place tried to stop the odd prisoner on his own. That ain't been the first time a prison-guard tried goin' up against the odd prisoner, either." Then Pullahein walked away.


	15. Chapter 15

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 15

…

1.

…

So most all of her neighbors had died… Excuse that, were _killed._ None of them died peacefully in their sleep or in a hospital bed like those scenes from those drama-movies your mom likes to watch. All of those folks that Heather knew more or less well in passing were slaughtered by creatures and ways unknown and unknowable to official law enforcement. Law enforcement was taking its sweet molasses old time about concocting some kind of sane explanation for all of those deaths at the same time. Molasses, because that's just about comparable to how fast they were moving on the case. While the freaks were still out there somewhere on the edge of reality, ready to raise Hell, the cops were getting a whole lot of nothing done. That goes back to why Heather has a whole detective agency on call—because the local underpaid and under-funded police force of Keystone Kops probably couldn't even enforce traffic violations half the time let alone stop a friggin' invasion from somewhere else. Take a gander at how many drivers actually follow the posted speed limit (officially 35 in the city but unofficially more like 45) or bother to use their turn signals (turn signals are for sissies and Commies), and one can get the picture—complete with a little section of tiny drawn-in cops scarfing down donuts in a pastry shop.

Meanwhile, Heather still didn't have the damnedest clue about what to do next. Most everything to this point was just one happenstance encounter followed by another, then another, and another after that. Heather knew that the problem wasn't coming directly from a certain abandoned, fog-enshrouded town this time—for once. Granted, that town had more holes in reality than an uptown street has cracks, nasty and evil things from other places coming out. (It reminded her of this joke about potholes so big that passenger-filled cars fall in and are never heard from again. Funny thing, some people went there and never came back. Hmm, maybe hiring some road crews would stop at least some of the disappearances in that town.) Trouble from that town has the town's name written all over it. Not literally, of course—not as if the creatures from there have the name tattooed on their foreheads (if they happen to have heads) or on their anatomical nether-regions (which they always seem to have). Because Heather had _other _senses, things in the neighborhood of telepathy and what-not, it was possible for her to sort of know if the freaks were from there.

They aren't. That's the whole damned problem. If this recent batch of screwy trouble in Heather's life was from that town, all the girl would have to do is hop a cab over to there, find out what's shakin', and then bust some heads. Boom, the end. Play the mood music. Roll the credits… Nope, that couldn't work this time.

Time, huh? Yeah, it's time for some hard-core thinking. Just reacting to everything happening and not knowing anything was getting useless fast.

Heather and Intemelessy were at the apartment, sitting at the kitchen table. (Never mind if it's not in the kitchenette itself. It's still the kitchen table. If you want to call it the dinner table, go ahead—even if people eat breakfast there too.) Just Heather and Intemelessy, that's it. It would have been nice to call Mel—that guy showing up whenever he darned well pleased instead of always being there. Would have been nice…if somebody had that dude's telephone number…or his address…or even know if he really was from this city.

Screw it. You work with what you have, when you have it. And that's that. Time to get this road on the show.

In front of Heather was one of her sketchbooks. When it came time to write diary entries, letters and stuff, that was when the girl used lined paper. Yet when it came time for some free-thinking with free-flying notations and what-not, putting thoughts together from all over the place, the unlined and unbordered expanses of drawing paper were just the thing, ready for anything.

"So…" began Heather, realizing that this was her sounding like one of those geeked-out oldsters at an office meeting. "What do we know? Well, other than the fact that those creeps have still got big happy plans?"

Intemelessy spoke up. Since there was no one else here at the table to do any speaking up in response to Heather's question, it had to be somebody. "Known information, the enemy relies upon superior numbers and access to advanced technologies in order to become pervasive. Also known information, their combat abilities are restricted by biological factors. Their physiologies are heavily compromised. It is for such reasons that they rely upon superior numbers as a primary tactic."

_Freaks, cheaper by the dozen, _wrote Heather on a lower corner of the sketchpad. It wasn't the answer Heather wanted, though. Well duh, maybe Heather should've asked the right question instead of being so vague_._ What Heather wanted to start knowing was _where _those freaks were at the moment. They needed a permanent hidey-hole in this world to cause trouble or something…

Still, anything said was probably worth thinking about at least a little bit. Tapping the pencil against the sketchpad, Heather mused on Intemelessy's high-caliber techno talk for a few second.

"I kinda see your point," came Heather's response. "Whenever I've had to deal with 'em, and I've dealt with those jerks _a lot, _there's always tons of those things strutting their ugly butts around like they already own the world. This world, I mean. They can sure take a lot of punishment from ordinary weapons and stuff. The question I wanted to ask though is, _where the Hell are they coming from this time?_"

…

Of course, Heather and Intemelessy still don't know about the odd prisoner—which must be driving some people just about completely nucking futs right about now. _We _can see who is doing what and when they do it. _We_ can even see a little bit into the minds of lunatics—such as one madman in particular… In our travels, using the mind's eye of the storyteller, we are able to see vast and far. Alas, Heather is not privy to our thoughts or conversations. Heather is apart and afar. There is no chance of her peeking into our brains and finding out about what we know. Nor is there a decent chance of any of us kicking down her apartment door to shout, _Are you stupid! The bad guy is in the jail! The big jail-house in the woods! And he's got magic powers to make all of this stuff happen! Go kill his crazy ass!_

If only it were that simple. There will be no such door-kicking because—again—Heather is afar and apart from us. We can only sit passably by as Heather acts and as things act upon her. To shout and rave at the nineteen-year-old girl at this point would be (at worst) the equivalent of standing up during the movie and start berating the on-screen characters or (at best) being one of those people who just do so less noisily—like that guy who likes talking out loud about the on-screen idiot that wanders into the basement, at midnight, while monsters are on the prowl.

Don't go into that basement. You know that thing's going to kill you. And don't run through the woods, because you'll just trip, break your ankle and become crippled because of a pebble that's half a millimeter out of the dirt. And don't run in _that _direction, because the crazy killer-monster will just teleport out from behind something and _get _you. Why didn't you do this, this and that…?

Without doubt, some people are still at it—wanting to kick down that door and shout those tings. Okay, what would those people say to Heather? It wouldn't work. Here's why.

Let's start with trying to say the obvious. _The madman is in a state penitentiary in the woods. _Now, _which _penitentiary in the woods is the main guy using for his base of operations? Gosh, there are only just about a few _bazillion _state penitentiaries in the United States. We house more jailbirds in America as a percentage of our population than in anywhere else in the world. (_We're number one! We're number one!_) And there are lots of penitentiaries in lots of forests. Yes, there are still _plenty _of forests in America. Even the most densely populated state in the union, New Jersey, has more than enough forest for dumbass-jackass hikers to get lost in every…single…year. (Hey, maybe the Jersey Devil got 'em. And if he did, good for 'em.) What state of the United States is the odd prisoner in? Or maybe he's not even in _this _version of the United States, not even on _this _version of Earth. Does the odd prisoner even exist in this time period?

Who knows… Maybe the odd prisoner is actually in a penitentiary in an alternate future-reality where they have jails on other planets. Yeah, like that movie starring the bodybuilder who became Governor of California in your world. Lucky you.

Okay then. We have now reached a point of mutual understanding. Since even we—despite our own travels and our ability to use the mind's eye of the storyteller—don't quite know _where_ or _when_ the odd prisoner is, that starts to make things even. There will be no kicking down of Heather's apartment door to shout answers today. Besides, doing that sort of thing is liable to make Intemelessy hurt somebody. Badly. Now back to Heather's dinner-table conversation.

…

"It is therefore unwise to allocate probabilities to the enemy using Silent Hill as a staging area," continued Intemelessy, talking to Heather while we had to do some of our own meanderings. (Pay attention next time.) "The probability exists. However, the primary factor of their pervasive mobility is indicative of multiple staging areas. Their technology is capable of emerging in any place beyond the metaphysical distortions of that town."

"Your robo-blabber needs fixing," said Heather, "but I understand you anyway…somehow. They don't need just that one town to set up shop. That, and they tried to set up shop right here, twice. It's like they…_gave up_ for now, trying to use this apartment." Heather smiled. "Maybe it's because we kicked their butts so badly that they're too scared to try again."

"Fear is largely a biochemical reaction in response to threatening stimuli which can rise in proportion to the probability of defeat," said Intemelessy. "In multiple encounters, we have eliminated many of their number. They continue their assaults despite losses beyond ninety percent. Therefore, in that they continue despite the stimuli of our presence, fear is not likely to be the cause of this temporary silence in enemy action at this time."

"Killjoy," muttered Heather. "Way to put a damper on things!" Nevertheless, Heather noted Intemelessy's commentary. _Freaks are freakishly fearless_. Those weren't Intemelessy's exact words, but who's counting? "Since you're so chock-full of smarts and keep knocking down everything I say, what's _your _take on what they're doing right about now?"

"In warfare," began Intemelessy, "a reduced intensity in the conflict is potentially indicative of multiple actions by the enemy, some of which can be eliminated as possibilities. Long-term recuperation is not a factor in that the enemy has access to infinite resources via multiple dimensions. Short-term recuperation of fighting capability is a potential factor in that the enemy shall require time to rejuvenate the resources in this reality prior to continued action.

"Disregarding long-term and short-term recuperation, another possibility exists of the enemy taking to a modification of tactics. The enemy has failed to accomplish objectives by way of frontal assault on your primary location. Therefore, the enemy has chosen other actions in other fronts. You may temporarily be out of the focus."

_Bad guys hauled ass to raise Hell somewhere else, _wrote the skinny blonde girl to the left of where some other notes were, putting a line between that note and the others. A pause, Heather added, _Hauled ass? _

"So why the Hell are they causing so much crap for me this time?" asked Heather aloud. "This isn't the first time crazy stuff has happened to me. And every time it does, it's for a really specific reason. Remember how you said that the freaks aren't that strong because their bodies are messed up? Well, they aren't that great in the brains department, either. Most of 'em tend to just mosey around, waiting for people to come by. _See human. Kill human._ They're not gonna win genius awards, most of them. Whenever I've dealt with them before, it's always because…" _Whamp!_

That's not exactly the sound of a lightbulb flashing on in somebody's mind, yet that's how it sounds when such a moment is expressed by a hand _slapped _atop a kitchen table. In this case, it was Heather's right hand—the proverbial incandescent having flared in her own mind when a major insight came to light.

"_That's it!_ _They always need someone normal in charge!_" Heather's voice suddenly became all full of excitement. "Intemelessy, whenever those ugly bastards start to show their messed-up faces outside of that town's borders, it's like they've always before had somebody _human_ to control 'em. The messed-up bitch that had my father killed, that was one. And when my dad went to Silent Hill, it was somebody else responsible. It's like the freaks need some damned _tour guide_ or something whenever they come into our world…or _call them _to our world. Always using some kinds of rituals." Now Heather put her next note in big letters near the center of the sketchpad page. _Monsters always need a babysitter!_ "All we've gotta do is find the bitch or bastard running the show. We beat the Hell outta them, and it's over."

Intemelessy sat very still for a moment. That moment became a longer moment. And then it became even more prolonged. If you think you've seen someone sitting still before, you haven't. That's nothing. You've never seen an android sitting without movement. An android can sit more still than a comatose patient in a full body-cast.

"I've made the big reveal, and now you're sitting like a robotic bump on a log?" went Heather. The blonde girl stood up and leaned over, reaching over a bit and waving one of her hands in the air where Intemelessy's eyes seemed to have been last focused. "Like… _Hell-o-o-o!_ Are you in orbit or what? Ground control to Intemelessy! Come in, Intemelessy!"

Those who have ever had the wonderful experience of waiting for a computer to do some heavy work know the deal. Tap keys on the keyboard, wave that mouse-pointer around, yell, holler, curse the name of every computer-corporation executive known, do whatever. Raise all the ruckus one wants, but that computer isn't going to start listening to you again until it's done doing what you or somebody else told it to do. The heavier the workload, the more it's going to sit there and seem to do a whole bunch of nothing that you can see. Heavy workload, indeed. A modern-day electronic desktop computer can do more calculations in a minute than any pitiful meat-creature human could possibly hope to accomplish doing by hand. Even if a human being had paper enough to cover the moon and a few million lifetime's worth of sharpened pencils, a human being couldn't get any damned where near close to the speed of a desktop PC. And if that machine sometimes has to ignore inputs from that meatbag in front of the keyboard and monitor to get stuff done, so be it. Quiet and rude as a computer can seem to be sometimes, it's being rude for a reason.

The same deal was going on with Intemelessy right about now. Her computer-based mind was now heavily calculating and analyzing Heather's statement in comparison to all known data. That's right, _all _the data in Intemelessy's long-term storage mind about the freaks was being put to use. Though a portion of Intemelessy's computer-based mind was still taking in environmental data because that's what a fighting machine always does, that part of her mind did not see Heather's hijinks as a threat worthy of attention.

"Based upon an analysis of all long-term data regarding the enemy, there is a ninety-nine point nineteen percent chance that you are correct in this instance," said Intemelessy.

"Hey! Glad you're awake," said Heather, sitting back down. "It must've been a productive nap or down-time…or whatever you androids call it. Now you're talking sense. And not just because you're agreeing with me for once. We've got to find the bad bastard."

Now we have a collective sigh of relief from some of you out there. You're thinking it's _about forking time _that Heather and Intemelessy _finally _figured out that _somebody _was behind this screwy business. And mere minutes from now, Heather and Intemelessy will figure out that the man responsible is none other than someone named Nonov Yurbiz—a rather pasty-pale but well-muscled Eastern-European immigrant who resides at Ninety-Nine Dorkmeister Lane in Buffalo, New York. He regularly makes business trips to New York City to handle business at his chain of delicatessens whenever he isn't sacrificing virgins to Sleeth-Hagor, the Ancient God of Blood and Shadows. That, and there's this whole business of him dabbling in religious rituals from a certain fog-enshrouded town. Funny how much one can figure out from just a few minutes of sleuthing and shooting the breeze, pencil and paper close at hand.

Just kidding. Really, to say it again, _we _know who's doing it. We know a lot about who's doing what and when they're doing it. It's just going to take a bit more for our girl and her female-android sidekick to find out the same. Give them a break. A human didn't invent the first wheel until a _lo-o-ng _time after folks started getting around on two limbs instead of four. Ditto for the usage of fire. And that whole so-called _invention _of artificial fire thing was purely by accident too—some dudes banging some rocks together while pounding on some caveman dinner-meat and making sparks… The rest is history—or pre-history, so to speak. (So much for that groovy story about a rogue-god coming down from on-high to give humans that which is hot, bright and damned good at keeping the creatures of the night away.) So, for some astoundingly important but astoundingly simple ideas to get a move-on between two people is going to take some time. Never mind if neither Heather nor Intemelessy aren't human-people. They're still people, and that's good enough for now.

…

2.

…

Sing-say oh-well, now we talk of Mel. He is supposed to be the go-to guy when it came down to giving Heather some tips on dealing with the problem. And _just _when Heather and Intemelessy were having themselves a little head-to-head session to kick ideas around, Mel was nowhere in sight. Just like a cop, never around when you need him. By the way, Mel wasn't at a donut shop. If he was not at the local donut shop, if not showing up at Heather's apartment _exactly when he would have the most important things to say, _where was he?

Sing-say oh-well, where the Hell is Mel? We aren't going to where he is right now. However, we'll go to where he _will _be soon enough.

This was a place in darkness. Wind howled in the distance, the wind in the void. This was nowhere and somewhere at the same time. What was and whatever shall be, it matters not in the long dark stretch of eternity.

Nowhere? Well, that's just silly. Everywhere has to be somewhere, right? Wrong. Not when it's not in any physical location on your plane of existence. Like the Land of Oz, it's not anywhere. Not to you, at least. Not in your world. Try stopping at the gas station and ask somebody for driving directions to there. See what happens.

_Yeah buddeh, Ah know where yer goin'. Ya take Route 99 'bout nineteen miles thaddaway. Take a right turn at Kansas Lane, which ain't really a lane but a highway. Yer gonna see the Wicked Witch Inn…_

Yeah, right. Forget about driving directions to this place, because it's not reachable by ordinary means no matter how many local folks you harass. That is, unless there's the off chance that one of those locals has knowledge of worlds beyond this one. 

A light flared on from above, shining down. Now there was sight of a circular wooden table upon a hard floor—a table with three wooden chairs around it. And that was all the light from above illuminated—just the circular wooden table and the three chairs on a hard flat floor. Beyond that little island of light was that infinite darkness with the howling of the before-mentioned wind, the howling that went up and down in pitch but never went away.

Perhaps in another time, under earlier circumstances, there was always the chance that the young man did have a choice. Everyone aged six to sixty knows how to play sick or play hooky. (_Cough-cough! _Can't go to work-school-office. Too sick. Gonna cough up a lung if not…_cough-cough…_careful. Got a brain surgery appointment lined up for this afternoon. _Cough-cough! _Yes indeed, doctors gonna go a-choppin' and a-carvin'. Might not live! _Cough-cough!_)

No hooky this time, not under his current circumstances. He had no more choice of movement than a comedian's lap-doll—a hand in the back and pulling the little mechanisms of action. Even if Mel would have preferred to be anywhere but here at the moment, he had to be here. He was _summoned._

_I would prefer not to, _thought Mel, mentally echoing something he read somewhere as he stepped out of the darkness and into the illuminated space—the circular wooden table surrounded by three chairs. All around, the howling wind in the surrounding darkness picked up a little bit.

Too bad, Tad. He had to have a seat, park his meat. Pull up a chair and let down some hair (not that Mel's neat hairstyle had hair to let down). Done with the walk, it's time to talk. Sounds like a plan, Stan.

Seated in the chair on the left, Mel put both hands atop the wooden table. _I'm here for a reason, _he thought. _Everything I did up to this point was for a good reason., and that's exactly my line of thought. _

That sound of the howling wind picked up a bit, went down just as quickly. Out from the darkness and into the light stepped a certain male figure in a business suit—only his swarthy face and hands exposed by his formal outfit, his dark hair as crisp as his getup. If he seems familiar, it's because he ought to be. This was the entity who paid a last-minute visit to the warden. This was the one previously known as _the intruder_.

The so-called intruder sat down in the rightmost seat—across from Mel. As he sat down, the third chair shifted and moved back a bit. It made Mel nervous, but he knew not to be scared by things like that happening.

"Good evening to you," said the intruder to the seemingly young man. "You know why you are here. This is a meeting to talk about your decision." He gave a somber pause. "Why did you not tell her the place of the evil?"

_Straight to the point, _thought Mel, suddenly felt a little bit sick—even sicker than the hypothetical liars mentioned earlier. Out of the frying pan and into the furnace, that's what happened here. Quiet and rude as a computer can seem to be sometimes, it's being rude for a reason. "Mr. Thunderhorse, I didn't think that Heather was ready to face him…yet. It was a long time since last using her abilities, at least long in her terms."

Mr. Thunderhorse, our one-time so-called intruder, he raised his head a notch—looking more stone-faced and stern. Hard to believe that he could look and be any more serious than he was already, but there you have it. Having once run a corporation the size of a city, a city the size of a state, all full of awesome technologies that were centuries beyond our own, he had to be serious.

He said to Mel, "You have decided to delay the confrontation for too long. Now people in her world are dead. The dark winds of evil began to blow with promises of much pain and suffering. You knew that dark things would happen if you failed to act." He paused. "It must be that you are not brave. Or, you are someone who cares too much. Which of those is the truth? Did I not send a huntress to be of assistance to the girl? Was that not enough for you?"

"Her headaches," said Mel, accepting Mr. Thunderhorse's arguments but still pleading with counter-arguments of his own. "Her power, it was taking too much out of her at first. When things started happening to her, it was hard for her to use her abilities. Even using a little bit of power made the girl fall unconscious. Only after a few more fights was Heather getting strong enough to maybe last a little bit. I… I didn't want to see her die too early."

That howling wind in the surrounding darkness picked up a little before quieting down. "Death is not to be feared," said Mr. Thunderhorse. "It is just a passing from one phase of existence into another. Worrying about that is not important. It is more important to stop the odd prisoner. The final truth we must face now is that Heather must fight him in the end."

Now the howling of the wind was _really _picking up. In fact, it sounded like being indoors in the midst of a full-blown tornado right about now. Hell, it was like a tornadoconvention_. _A person would half-expect doors to get blasted in or something to break loose with all of that angry noise. And the wind, the presences in the wind, they _were _angry.

Yet those presences were not without mercy. The wind quieted down, the forces in them becoming calm. Mr. Thunderhorse tilted his head to the right for a moment as if listening with his ears, listening….

Then he spoke. "We have decided. You will be taken away from that world for a time. It has come upon me to tell you what is wrong and what we can do. We cannot break the rules upon us all. But because Heather is not like those of her world, we can help her in another way beyond ordinary rules. Now you must leave with me. Much must be said to you before then."

"Yes, Mr. Thunderhorse," said Mel, his head still bowed. Mr. Thunderhorse bowed his head as well. That sound of wind became a little bit louder as both Mel and Mr. Thunderhorse faded out of sight, if not temporarily fading out of existence. Then the light went out, the darkness absolute, the meeting place gone for now.


	16. Chapter 16

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 16

…

1.

…

Something squawked or made a sound an awful lot like it. Hard to tell, because that sound was lost in all the _other _sounds filling this place. Squawking, screaming, howling, you name it, and we've got it…and more, all sorts of human and inhuman sounds—especially inhuman sounds—filling the whole penitentiary. Oh, and don't forget the sound of firearms.

Though marksmanship was a very small and very short portion of his training—most of the training for prison guards being about procedures, laws, regulations, and the regulations that cover those regulations—this was what Wright was doing all damned evening. _This _was him getting some real-live usage out of what he learned about weapons. _This _was him using the standard-issue shotgun and semi-automatic pistol wherever and whenever he needed to do so. He needed to do so a lot—capping and blasting so often that he thought the muzzle-end of his shotgun was glowing red at some point. Lucky the barrel of the damned thing didn't _melt _on him.

One good thing about a shottie, you can blast like crazy and not have to worry too much about jamming—not as much as you would worry about a semi-automatic handgun with its kajillions of tiny little interlocking parts. Trouble is, it takes so damned _long _to load the kind of shotgun issued to him—having to load this thing one cartridge at a time. There are kinds of shotguns that take round drums of ammunition, but those wonderful bean-counting office bureaucrats in the government offices (bless their little tax-cutting, money-saving hearts) just like the idea of _this _model of shotgun because it's cheaper (damn their little pound-foolish, money-grubbing hearts).

Never minding that, Wright took a whole three seconds to jam some shotgun cartridges from one of his copious pockets into his primary weapon. Some folks might not think that three seconds is long—unless they're in a hot hurry. And Wright _is _in a hot hurry.

_One... _Yeah, that's one second. Keep counting. _Two…_ Are we there yet? Nope, nuh-uh… _Three-e-e-e… _About time! Yes, Wright has successfully fed his shotgun.

_Thwack! _No, wait… That can't be right. Aren't shotguns supposed to go _boom _or something? No, it depends on where the scattergun is fired. A shotgun can sound pretty high when one fires it in a mountainous place instead of a forest or something.

Anyway… It was a _thwack _instead of a _boom _because Wright had to use the butt-end of the shotgun to lay the smack-down on one particularly nasty thing that decided it wasn't going to wait around for some silly human to finish loading a boomstick.

Nasty thing Wright had just whacked, too. Darned creature looked like a skinned and headless kangaroo with four arms growing out of its chest. Then again, animals from Australia tend to look a wee bit on the weird side anyway—relatively speaking. Though that creature wasn't necessarily from the version of Australia that we might know, it was nevertheless as tough as something from that southern continent because Wright had to _blast _that creature twice _after _he whacked it before it stopped moving.

A random bit of a radio commercial ran through Wright's mind. _How to speak Australian._ One look at that creature would be more like, _How to speak Martian. _

Soon as he slipped another two cartridges into his shotgun to make up for the ones he just used, soon as he made sure he had a full magazine in his pistol, it was already time to kill some more of those freaks. Those _things _just kept coming, and they came in packs.

…

It started some time around six in the morning. First those freaks were glimpsed in the shadowy walkways of the concrete walkways on the upper tiers, loping around like they own the place. Hard to tell at first what they were because a passing glance would give the impression that it was just someone else walking around.

But another glance, another look, and…_hole-e-e moley! _That second look reveals what a passing glance doesn't. _That thing isn't human_. Some prisoners cheered and some prisoners started getting freaked out when a pair of prison guards killed that particular intrusion.

More things appeared, becoming more common and more freakish in number—things that couldn't even pass for human at a costume party, not even with half the lights out and with about six gallons of Jack Daniels in everybody. (Six gallons _per person, _not for the crowd_._ Please temporarily disregard petty little concerns about things like _alcohol poisoning _for the sake of metaphor.)

Some of the freaks were on two legs, some of them skittered around on about two thousand legs—like those things looking like crosses between centipedes and dogs. Some of them didn't bother with legs, period. They had wings. And then there were the ones that had slimy pads, like slugs. Then there were the ones that just floated, looking like meaty, hairy balloons with tentacles.

Needless to say, but it's being said anyway, those things were scaring the Schlitz out of too many inmates. Then the freaks started appearing _in _the prison cells, then out in the rec yard, in the cafeteria, in the prison-guard bathrooms (_especially _in the bathrooms, practically crowded in there with things from…someplace else). Screw it. Let's just say that they were _everywhere_. No need to name every single location because wherever a person thinks there is a freak-free location, there the freaks are any damned way.

So the prison guards started shooting. They were damned careful to make sure that they weren't shooting the inmates—some of the inmates probably deserving death but not by firing squad. Distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys was easy enough most of the time because all that a prison guard had to do was shoot everything that didn't look human. A temptation goes to say, _shoot everything that looks like nothing on Earth, _but there's no telling where those things were from. Maybe from another version of Earth. Maybe not.

Whatever. Just shoot 'em. Shoot the freaks. Kill the monsters, kill the monsters, _kill the monsters! _

Oh yeah, there was lots of killing to be had, too. The _cracks _of pistols and the _booms _of shotguns came from the weapons and echoed off the hard walls, mixed in with shouts from prison-guards and the shrieks of freaks. And sometimes, there were sounds of agony as human beings went down fighting.

It wasn't just prison-guards trying either. Locked in their cells and nowhere to go, inmates were using shank-blades, bunk-post bludgeons and other hand-made contraband weapons to try and defend themselves.

No matter how many of the butt-ugly bastards the prison guards took down, there were even more things to blast. Most all of the prison-guards and inmates were dead within the first hour, killed outright by things that had no right to exist in this world. Some of the human casualties were dead in the medical sense, but some of them were…_taken over._ There were freaks that were able to jump onto the backs of victims, use some kind of digestive acid to eat through clothes and skin, then tap directly into the spinal cords—using human bodies as a horse-jockey uses a horse. (Ride 'em, cowboy. Giddyup…) 

After that crisis-filled first sixty minutes, there were only a few prison-guards left in this place. Still alive, still with weapons and being able-bodied, they were still in the fight. They've got a job to do. And they'll do it to the bitter, horror-show end. This brings us up to the happy fun-time situation that Wright and his buddies were in.

…

"Hey Semper, just scored my first two-dozen!" shouted another one of Wright's fellow prison-guards, shouting for the sake of being heard above the distinctly heavier sounds of shotguns. He'll probably have to shout for a while after this madness due to hearing loss. _If _he makes it out of this. He swiveled his weapon, another _blast_. "Just got three in one shot!"

"Less talking, more shooting!" shouted back the prison-guard named Semper, blasting away with his own shotgun. Yes, Semper himself was practicing what he was preaching by keeping his mouth shut and letting his weapon do the talking for him, his right eye behind the sights of his shotgun—as if anybody really needs to aim a shotgun much, but that's the sort of man Semper is. His trigger-finger was getting in some serious and prolonged physical training today.

Semper, huh? With a name like that, maybe he ought to have been in the Marines—_semper fidelis. _Oh man, the recruiters and drill instructors would have been all over that. And given the present company of crawling, creeping, loping, leaping, flapping, flying creatures of various shapes, sizes and modes of mobility, maybe Semper ought to be recruited into the _Space Marines_. Of course there are no Space Marines in this world, but maybe the government ought to strongly consider starting up that new branch of the Armed Forces if this madness was to go beyond this penitentiary.

Or maybe it already has gone beyond and outside of this penitentiary. Maybe other places in the world were like this and nobody here knew about it because communications to the outside world was gone_._ Gone with the wind? More like, gone with the sin.

Wright thought _sin _at the moment exactly because that was what he was seeing with the various shapes of the creatures participating in this shotgun-shindig. It was pretty funny how the creatures that appeared in the prison cells looked as if they represented things. More particularly, those things looked an awful lot like psychotic-artistic manifestations of whatever some of the criminals did—or were presumed to have done—to get them sent to this place.

Sample some examples to see where this is going. Wright saw a few creatures that could have once been human, even wore clothes and everything. Except the creatures were all corpse-gray and had skin spiderwebbed with dark veins, dark fluid seeping from mouths. Those creatures must represent _murder._ He also saw creatures that had atrophied legs and got around pretty damned well by moving around on elongated arms—representing _assault and battery_. (Make that, _armed _assault and battery—ha-ha.) Then there were some two-legged creatures whose upper-bodies were tube-shaped, those creatures leaping at prisoners and blasting acidic slime from mouth-holes—likely representing _rape_. Some flying creatures like large green-skinned bats that made some damned loud racket and wouldn't shut up until a good long while after they were supposed to be dead. They stood for….

Hmmph. Taking a moment to _think _between times he had to _shoot_, Wright figured those flying might represent _robbery._ Trouble is, that wouldn't make much sense since there are countries in this world where the paper money is beige instead of green. In fact, though the world was supposed to be off precious metals as a standard for decades, the world still worships gold, silver and platinum in that order. So wouldn't it make sense for a flying creature representing _robbery _to have a body colored like currency from all over the world? Even the funkadelic colors of Canadian paper-money? (No, it's _not _Monopoly money. Stop laughing at it.)

And as _soon as Wright thought those thoughts, _a flying and noisy creature with a body that was something other than green swooped down from the high-up concrete ceiling—the creature shouting something that probably meant _I'll kick your asses _in whatever language it was using.

In response, a walking creature at floor-level shouted something back in the same language—a beige creature that was mostly a big mouth on a pair of fast legs with a tail in the back for balance. Talking the same talk, it could be true the creatures came from the same other-world. Could also be, that flying thing was giving air reconnaissance.

Talking creatures? Hell, why not? Parrots talk trash all the damned time, and any animal scientist with half a year's worth of undergrad studies will tell you that parrots are actually smart enough to know what they're saying if trained correctly. Guess what? Animal scientists in our world have been teaching gorillas and chimps to use sign-language for decades. Guess what on top of that? Whales use language, too. And if this doesn't seem believable, then go look it up. The gift of gab is not a human exclusive.

Whatever the case, Wright shut up a few more of the things with blasts from his shotgun. When too many of them started flapping his direction, he hit the deck and stopped moving where he lie, blending in with the fallen dead—humans and creatures alike. Some way and some how, he avoided lying down in a puddle of blood. Now that was probably dumb luck, not getting grunged, because the floors of this place were getting pretty slick with spilled life-fluids.

He waited for the flying things to get a move on. Wright was no animal professor, but he knew the whole rag about non-humans that can talk. He also had no doubt that professors ranging from anthropology to zoology would give their first-born children to get some of these freaks into labs to find out more about them—their cultures, their languages…before cutting open the before-mentioned creatures to find out how their insides are set up. Wright would gladly go back to school just for the privilege of slicing open some of those freaks himself and get paid for it.

While Wright was moving along, stepping out of one back-hall and into an intersection, one of the flying creatures came flapping back in this direction and was getting a little too nosey. (Hmm, that human wasn't lying there a second ago.)

Too bad, post-grads. Dude's got to kill freaks before they kill _him._ That flying thing was going to be one less specimen for the college profs to slice and dice. 

A _blast _from Wright's shotgun took out one of the flying-creature's leathery wings, making it fall to the crowded floor. Once there, some lobster-dog creatures leapt onto the flying thing and began having chow-time. Some smaller creatures popped out of the flying thing's belly, taking flight like leathery birds to escape the death of momma-bird.

Did that make Wright a…_mommy-killer, _like what _somebody else _was accused of being?Now this was self-defense. It's not like Wright was going to stand around all lolly-golly and let himself get ripped to shreds by that thing's razor-filled dinosaur-looking beak.

Wright just shook his head and ran on before some of those lobster-dog things decided that _he _would make a good meal. (He didn't realize it just then, yet the reason why the lobster-dog things didn't attack him was that human flesh wasn't compatible with lobster-dog bellies.)

"_Wright!_" shouted an angry and static-ridden voice from his communications radio. Wright thought he turned off his radio, but maybe hitting the deck earlier clicked it back on. "_Get your sh…_" _Bzzt! _"…_Freakin' together! We need your slow ass down here! Central observation desk! We've got shooters!_"

Wright took some shots to clear the way ahead, blocked by a trio of very fat vaguely human things that had fat on top of fat. (Well okay, what did _they _represent, robbing a donut shop? Over-eating in public? Cannibalism?) When they fell over, they had a hard time getting back up. All Wright had to do was run around them—noticing the dark fluid spattering their flabby chests where the shotgun pellets blasted them. They made sounds like zoo animals on drugs, trying to grab him in passing, but he was too fast for them.

…

The central observation desk was a metal desk, of course. It was dead-center of the wide-open area where a prison guard could look up and see all three tiers of prison cells in this wing of the penitentiary—concrete walkways above, sunset-colored light shining down through the industrial-styled ceiling high above. There was a skylight directly above, the light of day or the dark of night visible through the annealed bulletproof glass. That glass in the ceiling wasn't there for decoration or for the well-being of the prisoners, by the way. The cheapskate designers of this place figured that having natural light shine in during the day would save on the electric bill.

That's just it. Darnedest thing Wright ever saw, it was like there was sunset-colored light from outside and above was shining _directly down _on the observation desk. By this light, Wright saw three of his fellow prison-guards huddled behind the metal piece of prison furniture. Normally, the golden sunlight of a dying day shines sideways and casts everything in its indirect glow, sunlight angling in from the horizon. Now that golden sunset-light was glowing directly down like a spotlight from sunset and heaven.

All the freaks in the place seemed to be staying _well _away from that soft golden light. Golden light, dying light, the light of a blazing sunset that wasn't dead yet and wasn't giving up. Those surviving prison guards were not going to call it quits.

"_Wright!_" shouted one of the prison guards from behind that desk. It was none other than Pullahein. "_Get over here!_"

Breaking off a stare at the spectacle—golden sunset-sunlight shining straight down—Wright did what he was told, running to duck low enough as so his head could not be visible over the top of the desk. He didn't ask why everyone was taking cover behind this desk at this side. There wasn't much use in taking cover because there were freaks _all over the place_, at the periphery of this open space…and being shot up by surviving prison guards elsewhere.

A too-loud _cli-pop _matched a flare of blue sparks coming off the top of the metal desk when it was hit. Hey, better to have the desk being hit rather than one's body. Hit with _what, _Wright had no idea. The only way that bullets would give off that much in sparks would be if the desk was made out of flint and the projectiles were tipped with steel. Since bullets are usually brass nowadays, such pretty much ruled that out.

"You done heard the heads-up about the enemy shooters_, _eh?" said Pullahein, peeking out from the right side of the desk to fire some shots with his own pistol before pulling back. _Cr-crack! _"Thank goodness they ain't got much in the way of tactics even if they got decent enough marksmanship skills. We already took down two."

"Yeah, those things shoot decent enough to take out Carver," said another prison guard. "He worked here twelve years, and they got him _just like that._"

That was when Wright noticed the unusual pistol that Pullahein was using. Pullahein's currently equipped weapon appeared to be made out of a dark-blue metal. Even by the golden sunset-light, he could tell that the weapon would be a more full blue in full daylight. He could also see that the thing had just one visible moving part—the trigger. Even if the dark blue-metal pistol could probably pass for an ordinary firearm at a distance, seeing it up close showed it to be something else.

Every modern firearm has multiple parts that work together to make projectiles go _crack _and make bad guys go _dead._ But that blue-metal weapon was something else. Wright had never seen that kind of pistol before. And the color was something else. Firearms are black or silvery—mostly black because shiny weapons are a sure-fire way, so to speak—of getting the enemy's attention. Blue…? Where in heaven's name did Pullahein get that thing?

It could be that Pullahein took it off of one of the freaks that showed up with firepower, but that was doubtful. If Pullahein did get the strange pistol from one of the dead freaks, then it would take at least a few seconds to figure out how to use the thing on a basic level and probably weeks to use it like a professional… Nope. Pullahein must have had that strange blue-metal pistol all along, holding it comfortably and expertly in his right hand as if he had used the thing for a good long time. It was one more of those things about Pullahein that left other prison-guards wondering—like how he seemed to know _so much _about what the freaks did, how they did it, even knowing their language most of the time.

Pullahein grinned. "Hey, Wright. Take a quick look-see over _this _edge of the desk…" He tapped a part of the desk near the right side. "Tell me what you see. A quick look, I'm sayin'. Not a starin' contest."

So Wright did so. He popped his head over the indicated part of the desk before popping it right it back down, taking another glance at the creatures who had taken up the idea of taking pot-shots at human-folks was better than running up close to use claws and jaws and tentacles and what-not. In that one glance, he had the most astounding glimpse of something… No, _five _somethings. He had this impression of pot-bellied, fat-bodied beings—legs and arms like fat-roll sausages, torsos flabbed the same way. It made him think of this cartoon figure he keeps seeing in car-magazine ads… Something French. _Michelin, _that's it. (Pronounced _mish-e-lah _if you're at least trying to say it properly in _francais _or pronounced _mish-e-lin _if you're using American English.)

For those who've never seen him before, the Michelin Man is a smiling cartoon-guy with arms and legs made out of white circular fluffs reminiscent of tires. His gut looks like that too, all made out of circular fluffs. Except, the Michelin Man was supposed to be a white dude instead of some gray-skinned things. And the closest thing the Michelin Man would ever have to weaponry would be one of those pistol-shaped drills used by race-car pit crews. Or a tire-iron from a car-jack. You can lay somebody out with a tire-iron too, especially if you get them in the head. And if you can't go for the head, it's pretty easy to break some knees with that thing.

"They look just like the tire man, don't they?" said a third prison guard to Wright. "Never thought I'd go out like this, a shoot-out with the tire-man's mutant cousins. Friggin' _mutant _monsters, that's what they are."

"Don't knock mutants, buddy," said Pullahein. After all, humans ain't but some kinda mutant apes. Yeah, mutant apes, gettin' around to walkin' on two legs instead of all fours. Leavin' two limbs free to get work done."

"I don't believe in that. They taught me Creationism in school," said the fourth prison-guard. _Cli-pop _went the weapons-fire of the gray-skinned freaks still standing around and shooting, those evil Michelin-Men mutant-things. "Pullahein, you're a good guy and all, but I would've thought you were more open to other points of view. Since we're pretty much done for, this would be a good time to make peace with The Big Guy in The Sky, don't you think?"

Pullahein smiled. "Well, I'd sorta believe in that Protestant Christian saying about how the Big Guy help those who help themselves. And _help ourselves _is exactly what we're gonna do, 'cause we ain't done yet," said Pullahein. "We still got a few aces in the hand that fate done dealt us." Then Pullahein gave a certain look to Wright.

In that look, eye to eye with Pullahein, Wright saw something. He… _He felt it in his head. With creatures galloping and flapping all over the place, with freaks from some alternate universe packing sci-fi weaponry, amidst all of this chaos, things became quiet._

_Some kind of willpower passed from Pullahein to Wright—a willpower born of fighting freaks like this for a very, very long time. Other lands, other times, Pullahein—people like Pullahein—have been in this business longer than whole civilizations have existed in this world. _

_Pullahein's people, they didn't call themselves soldiers. They call themselves something else. Whatever Pullahein's people call themselves, it more mattered that they were always there to fight things like this, from world to world, from time to time. And they would keep fighting… Sometimes the lost. Sometimes they won. Whatever happens, whatever the odds, they fight to win. _

_Then Wright…_snapped out of it. "I know what you are," said Wright to Pullahein, suddenly feeling all full of confidence. Wright was now feeling as if he could take on six hundred freaks single-handedly and win. With Pullahein fighting on their side, it was possible. It _had _to be. "I know what you are!" he said again. "Why didn't you tell everybody?"

"People ain't too keen on believin' stuff nowadays. Leastways, not the locals," was Pullahein's response. He gave a smile and a nod. "But you believe now, huh? Now let's say you and me put the hurt on some of them freaks."

"Yes! I'm with you!" cheered Wright. He noticed that the other prison-guards here glanced at him oddly, slightly annoyed—those two wondering where this sudden surge of gung-ho came from. Wright didn't care about what they thought. More like he wanted them to care about getting the job done.

"Okay, battle-buddy," said Pullahein. "You take up a firing position on the right. I'll be here on the left." Pullahein nodded to the left side of this metal desk they were crouching behind all this time, using for cover while having this wonderful and leisurely conversation…given the _cli-pop _of weapons fire trying to destroy the metal desk, the evil Michelin Men things making a ruckus. "We're gonna break cover simultaneously and take them six troublemakers out."

"We break cover at the same time, they won't know which one to shoot first," said Wright, restating what he heard. "Makes perfect sense."

"You got it," said Pullahein, keeping his head down before lying down flat nine feet behind the desk and to the left. Wright did the same on the other side. Pullahein waited the space of five heartbeats, and then he rolled out from behind the desk, Wright doing the same at that matching moment.

Both Pullahein and Wright's weapons opened up on the five evil Michelin-looking mutants. Wright's standard-issue shotgun and Pullahein's pistol of dark-blue metal somehow sounded very similar, hard to distinguish one from the other. That is to say, their weapons sounded like thunder, which was fitting because their assault struck like lightning.

The five chubby gray-skinned freaks probably thought they could keep our heroes pinned down forever with pot-shots. They thought wrong. Great big chunks of the creatures' chests vanished from the front and exploded out their backs. That was true for four of the creatures. As for the fifth one—the last one to be blasted—a brief shower of red sparks flared out from its flabby back—sparks mixed with that blasted spray of dark fluid and guts. Indeed, Pullahein and Wright had killed those remaining freaks in one go—all the surviving Michelin Men creatures gone bad.

Everything went quiet. All the flapping of leathery wings and the scampering of mutated feet, all the shrieking and squawking, all of that…stopped. It's like when someone in a crowd of party-animals says or does something truly shocking—the music stops (going _vrrt_ when the needle on the DJ's turntable gets slid out of its groove) and _everybody _turns to look and whatever just happened. For these party animals, the party was _over_. They aren't rocking to the jailhouse rock _now_, are they?

After that sudden period of shocked quiet, now came some other noises. The freaks that got around on legs, tentacles and whatever, they collapsed. Fell over sideways, went splay-legged onto their bellies, they were no longer up and moving. As for those with wings a-flappin' and a-flyin', it's not like they could stop in mid-air and hang there. Nah, that's against the rules—like the rule about _gravity_. Those things started dropping too, dropping from above. Though they didn't die from impact on the big hard floor, only a few of them falling from really high up, they were certainly on the way out of this life.

The creatures were all lying down now. If not dead, then they were dying. Lie down now, children. It's nap-time. _The long nap, _as gangsters used to say.One could hear many of the creatures struggling to hold on—gasping, breathing their last in this life, breathing the air of this world that they weren't supposed to breathe. Nasty things breathing our atmosphere, we don't need that. Might as well go share the air with the tailpipe of a Buick. Yeah, just start _sucking_ that thing—open-mouthed, giving tongue-action and all that.

The surviving prison-guards weren't sucking now, not with Pullahein and Wright having pulled that last stunt just now. Pullahein waited, looked around from his firing position, then stood up—looked around some more before speaking. "This fight's over. Wright, walk with me. We gotta check somethin' now."

Wright got to his feet. So did the other surviving prison guards. If Pullahein thought it was safe to stand up, then it must be. Wright then moved to walk at Pullahein's side, approaching the place where the six most troublemaking creatures were lying down dead in pools of their own dark life-fluid and heaps of strange guts. Crossing the floor meant stepping on the corpses of some of the other freaks or kicking aside the smaller ones, but that was quite okay. It was better than okay, in fact.

Soon enough, Pullahein and Wright were at the group of fallen Michelin-looking things. "Get your weapon aimed on 'em just in case," said Pullahein, walking over to one of the fallen creatures. "I know they're dead as duds, but this is how we do this kind of thing. I wanna show you somethin', soon as I find it."

Wright kept his shotgun pointed in the general direction of those things even while Pullahein walked around to the back of the last creature that went down. Said Pullahein, "You done saw the sparks fly when we lit one of 'em up." Pullahein toed the torso of the nearest corpse to turn it over—turning over the torso alone because its upper body was no longer connected to the lower body. Though with rolls of flabby-looking gray skin, it could be that the creatures' bodies really were lightweight after all. "_That's _why we had the fireworks display."

Attached to that creature's upper back and out of sight during the battle was some kind of…motor-backpack? To Wright, the thing attached to the creature's back was something that looked like a combination of lawnmower engine and something from a NASA space-vehicle. It had this generally blocky look, some kind of engine-looking thing. Though part of the thing was built into in the flesh of the creature's back, there were still some wires and tubes for some additional connections along the outside. Most prominent was the circular black-on-yellow _radiation _symbol on the engine-thing—partially blackened because of damage when a shot put a hole through it.

Wright looked at the engine-thing, especially the _radiation _symbol. Why would something from another world be in possession of something with a _human-made _symbol on it? For all Wright knew, creatures from other worlds probably had a symbol that looks like a jackass kicking a moron to represent _radiation hazard. _As in, somebody would have to be a _moron _to expose oneself to dangerous forms of radioactivity without proper precautions. And if it takes a jackass to _kick _the before-mentioned moron to save that moron's life and health, so be it. (A jackass kicking a moron… _This is Sparta-a-a-a!_)

Who's the moron here? Putting a hole in a device with _that _symbol on it and standing this close ought not be good news. "Are we okay?" he asked Pullahein, looking and staring at the hole in the engine-thing still deeply embedded in the creatures back.

"Yeah, we safe," said Pullahein. "So long as nobody does somethin' _stupid _like tryin' to put some electricity through it an' try to juice it back up again, we got nothin' to worry about. Safe as a burnt-out light-tube."

_Doesn't he mean, lightbulb? _No, he doesn't. Wright now knew that Pullahein wasn't from around here. Where Pullahein came from, they didn't use bulbs to light places up. So… "Safe as a burnt-out light-tube," agreed Wright.

"Yeah," said Pullahein. "But though we're safe, that don't include them people elsewhere and everywhere. Now we gotta look around to find out what the odd prisoner's up to and where he's headed. He ain't around here. If he was, we'd still be blastin' holes in them enemy things. He left this-here _backup _plan that you and I so kindly stopped. Cover your own backside with attacks and attackers while makin' your own retreat. It's what we call _withering fire._ "

…

2.

…

Wright could not imagine giving any sort of workable explanation as to what happened here, what to say to the state authorities when they would show up at a scene like this. Well okay, make that _other _state authorities. Everyone on the state payroll—everyone from the warden to the maintenance personnel and even down to the lowly prison guards—is supposed to be an authority. So what authority could explain all of _this? _Just about ninety-nine percent casualties among prison-guards, probably _one hundred percent _casualties of all inmates_, _and…gosh, just about a gazillion creatures of every shape, color, form and biological function imaginable without names. That's because nobody has seen them before. Hopefully, nobody ever sees them again.

Hope all he like, yet those creatures will appear again in this world. And though it would not be here, Wright would have to face the freaks again. That will happen some other time, some other grounds. Wright and Pullahein will have been done with their role here when that happens, though.

Not yet. As Wright followed Pullahein along the third-level concrete walkway, ignoring the horror-show sights in the prison cells they passed, excuses and explanations kept trying to come to mind. Some kind of rational-sounding explanation had to go up because nobody would believe that monsters from another world invaded this penitentiary and started killing folks.

So, what killed just about every damned body here? Food poisoning? Yeah, some mad scientists genetically engineered some parasitic creatures, put the eggs in the food shipment, and the creatures burst from the chests of everyone who ate in the cafeteria—as if the food served to the inmates wasn't bad enough. Monstrous parasites could probably only add to the flavor.

Try again. Okay, how about….animal escaped from the zoo? Unless that happens to a zoo from Planet Zebatron, transported by a flying saucer that so happened to crash nearby—bearing in mind that someone actually _believes _in extraterrestrials—that wasn't likely. _Not bloody likely…mate, _as a Brit would put it. And the freaks weren't even _from _outer-space. They were from _beyond _this space, beyond this universe. Strike two, buckaroo. No-go on the crashed flying-saucer scenario.

A third explanation? How about…_terrorism?_ Hey, _yeah…_ Just about every whack-job activity possible and impossible ought to be accepted under that explanation. Who knows _what _kind of crazy schemes terrorists come up with? And after all the military and law-enforcement personnel clean up this joint, just slap _top secret _on all the reports to make everybody shut up about it. _Bing-bing-bing…_ Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner.

In that thought, in that moment, these two prison-guards were at the cell of the most infamous inmate of this fine incarceration institution. With Pullahein standing there and waiting, Wright stepped close to see what Pullahein was looking at.

"Lookit," said Pullahein, using his right foot to slide open the prison cell—the only unlocked prison cell in the entire penitentiary. Pullahein had used his right foot to do the opening because he had both hands on his pistol. "We both know this scumbag ain't need his cell unlocked to get out. And he _did _get out. Least he left his cell just about good condition. Relatively speakin'."

_Relatively speakin' _was too correct. Compared to the prison cells that contained mutilated corpses—human corpses and the inhuman corpses doing the killing, blood and gore _all over_ the place—this cell_, _this prison cell looked as normal as can be. All the _other _prison cells were blood-spattered messes.

Not this one. It looked too normal. One could just imagine the odd prisoner sitting down in that chair of his before talking in that too-calm and cultured voice of his. _You speak of monsters? Why, my witness and I have seen nothing of the sort. Then again true would be semantic and etymological considerations of the term. A monster is that which does not belong… _

Then the odd prisoner would start talking—sounding like a professor lecturing a 100-level course to a bunch of college freshmen who would rather be at a beer blast instead taking notes on a Thursday afternoon. Don't bother to wait for Friday because, just like Congress, weekends on campus are too important to leave off for just one more day of the week. This attitude is quite alright, because the freshman that have such attitudes flunk out soon enough—leaving more room on the college rolls for the kids who actually want to academically survive the school experience long enough to get that paper come the month of May four years hence.

Speaking of freshman, Wright was feeling even more like a newbie to this whole business. Pullahein was the professor-level expert here, carefully and expertly worked his way clockwise along the periphery of this prison cell—the overhead florescent light-fixture locked in the ceiling revealing just about every detail which Pullahein no doubt went over. Not that Pullahein told Wright to do anything, Wright just stood here and did nothing much because he didn't want to put a crimp in what Pullahein was doing.

Wright went back to the little corner-desk—which had absolutely _none _of the religious books that the odd prisoner had borrowed from the prison library. In doing so, he passed by the section—_that _section of prison-cell wall. Right now, the wall had _nothing _on it other than some very vague and faded marks that could be explained away as being painted-over graffiti. We know better. We know what those faded marks _really _were.

Then Pullahein went back to the bunks, starting with the made-up lower bunk that was too neat because the odd prisoner never slept in it anyway. The top bunk was a rumpled mess because the odd prisoner's cell mate _always _had to sleep in it.

"Now you gotta follow my reasonin' on this," said Pullahein. "This Jimmy was a good guy who just ended up in bad circumstances, ya gotta understand. I know that, you might know that later, but we can't argue against them wonderful lawyers and what-not based on our _understandin'_. Anyway, Jimmy wouldn't leave his bed a mess unless there was a _damned good reason. _His momma done raised him right. So, big question… _Why'd he leave a messed-up bed?_"

That said, Pullahein holstered that strange pistol of his before starting to spread out the rumpled bedsheet. Normally, prison-cell bunks don't have bedsheets because wrapping those things up can make good ropes to try and escape with…or kill with. Yet this prison cell was an exception—because the odd prisoner was an exception. He also _demanded _exceptions.

Mixed in with the folds and wrinkles of the white bedsheet was a sheet of white paper. "Bingo," said Pullahein. "Sorta figured our guy woulda left somethin' like a heads-up for us." It looked as if Pullahein only glanced over the paper, but he actually read the entire letter that fast—just in one look. "Accordin' to this-here note, a girl's in some big trouble. Now you read it."

Wright accepted the page of handwriting. No doubt, this letter was written in haste and on the sly—looking at the quality of the penmanship…or lack thereof. Even with the quick-scribble handwriting in small letters to cover one side of the page, it nevertheless told Wright what he needed to know, what the other players in this tale need to know. Went the letter…

_This sounds crazy, but somebody has to believe me. There's this girl named Heather Mason. I'm talking about that Heather Mason. You know, the one whose dad wrote those stories. That girl is in a lot of trouble because nobody here was able to tell her about the odd prisoner. _

_Ask her to go to that town and follow the path of the odd prisoner to wherever he goes from there. I should say _through _there, because that town goes to other places. If I said what kinds of places they were, you'd say I was crazy. But I'm not. Not yet._

_Just please ask her. Ask her to go to Silent Hill. Heather can go there to reach where we are going next. We're leaving soon, and the odd prisoner wants me to go with him. I hope Heather can stop him before it's too late._


	17. Chapter 17

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 17

…

1.

…

Not too long ago, some British scientists did a tad bit of research about mind-powers and phone calls. According to those labcoat-wearing lab-folks, people just might have this extra sense of who is going to call them _just before _the phone rings. It's when someone picks up the phone and says, _I was just thinking about you. _

The human deniers of this phenomenon would just chalk it up to coincidence. That's right, it's just plain-Jane, flat-out coincidence that human beings happen to be thinking about someone just when they call. Or it could be more like a _Jungian _coincidence—when some kind of collective mind of human thought mentally taps someone to give a hint of knowledge beyond the normal senses. Those same deniers are the kind of people who say that global warming is a hoax cooked up by Democrats, that the hole in the ozone layer is a trick of the light, and there's enough dead-dinosaur oil in the ground to last forever. And even if it doesn't, Judgment Day is going to render all environmental damage moot any damned way. Believe in God but don't believe in strange things. Hmm, curious…

And right about now, our girl Heather was going to get _anti-_curious—if not a little anti-social. Why? Nine o'clock in the morning, the telephone started ringing…way out past the apartment living-room…the phone on a little raised nightstand…next to the door out. It rang. And it kept ringing, too. Thing was making enough noise to herald in the apocalypse that some deniers won't deny will happen.

Still ringing… Some religions have it as so an angel with a great big horn (a _musical _horn) is going to come down from the skies and make a blast of sound to let the world know that the show's over for humanity as we know it. To modernize things, maybe that angel of the apocalypse would take a hint from that _loud-ass thing ringing out there._

_Nine freakin' o'clock, _thought an angry and naked Heather, squinting and squirming in bed to take a narrow-eyed look at the electronic alarm clock—the florescent numbers brighter than the morning light shining through the curtains of the bedroom window. Well, not totally naked. The girl had bedsheets wrapped around her body like a toga. It wrapped around her due to her night-time writhing—probably from a dream, probably from a nightmare. Now that damned phone was screaming its little plastic ass off.

Vicious thoughts went through her sleep-hazed waking mind, thoughts made vaguely bizarre by the lingering dream-time stuff of semi-consciousness. Heather's dream-stuff imagination envisioned a battalion of cyborg-soldiers with nuclear-powered jackhammers marching upon a country full of telephone factories, set to destroy and all telephones inoperable forever. Yes, cyborg soldiers…. Forkin' _huge _cyborg-soldiers. Ten feet tall apiece, with armor made out of the same stuff used to make Army tanks from the future, the jackhammers they have mighty enough to bring down buildings and all the damned telephones in 'em, all the telephone-making factory-workers howling in rage and fear about not being able to make the things that wake up nineteen-year-old girls—or anyone else, for that matter—before noon. Never mind the makers of alarm clocks. And if nuclear-powered jackhammers carried by cyborgs can do that to buildings, imagine what they can do to the soft, vulnerable bodies of telephone factory-workers…?

A smile came to Heather's face, disturbingly happy thoughts of telephone factory-jerks shrieking in pain and suffering under assaults from huge cyborg-monsters…_until the phone rang again._

_Nine freakin' o'clock in the damned morning! _Heather threw off the tangled toga-bedsheet—revealing slender nakedness but it not mattering since nobody else was in her bedroom. When _it _rang again, Heather thought about running out there to answer the thing without even bothering with clothes. Oh yeah, an angry streaker. Exhibitionism, anyone?

But no. Talking to whoever the fork was calling her _at this time in the morning, _talking to someone over the phone while standing butt-naked, that would just be wrong. It's more like something a phone-sex operator would do—or what the people who called those sorts of things hoped they would do.

Heather stomped over to her dresser, opened some drawers, pulled on some jeans and another one of her midriff-baring sleeveless tops. Screw undies for now. Heather had an appointment with a ringing telephone, maybe an appointment ending with the thing in pieces.

_I'll ring _your _bell alright, _thought the girl_. Ring it with a claw-hammer, that's what. _The girl's bare feet padding across the wooden floor, her eyes focusing on the bedroom door, the door _swished _open before Heather reached it—anger throwing a little more oomph into her mental abilities.

Normally, Heather simply would not answer a phone before noon. It couldn't be the business people connected to dad's books. They knew her well enough to _not _call in the a.m.—lest they face the wrath. And the phone call sure as Hell wasn't going to be anyone bugging her for money. All of her bills were paid automatically from one of her various bank accounts—just the interest alone going to that. (Dirt-cheap apartments for super-rich girls, for the win!) If it was one of those creepy Harry Mason-obsessed fanboy whose fandom went too far or some college student bugging her about something like _the semiotics of Buttercake-brand pancakes in the quasi-metaphysical contexts of monsters as found within the literary works of Harry Mason _(which actually did happen once), Heather wasn't going to bother. And to think that the girl changed her phone number _how many times?_ It would actually be easier to keep or toss cell phones, but the girl didn't go for those little portable things.

Under normal circumstances, Heather would not answer the mother-forking phone this damned early in the morning. But these were not normal circumstances. Something was telling Heather that this call was important—the same kind of _something _in the category of that which makes people able to sort of tell just whose calling before they pick up the phone. Was just thinking about you…

Out of bed, barefooted, wearing clothes without undies, this was her crossing the apartment living room to get over to the phone, passing by Intemelessy—sitting upright on the sofa.

"Hello!" went Heather, all with fiery nuclear-warfare thunderclouds in her tone of voice. Nope it wasn't the nicest of greetings. Ten feet of big muscular anger in a skinny girl less than five feet tall, that's what this is. And though Heather wasn't a cyborg with a nuclear-powered jackhammer, Heather _did _have a killer android-girl within shouting distance.

"_Good mornin', ma'am_," came the familiar voice of a man's voice through the telephone speaker. Familiar voice to us heeding the tale, that is. "_My name's Pullahein, a prison guard. We done got this note, see. It's tellin' us that you're in trouble. Some guy we call the odd prisoner, he's doin' it._"

"Whoa, hey…. Slow down! Who, what…?" Then came an anger-building pause, Heather about to vocally explode. (Goodness gracious, here it comes.) "_Who the Hell is this!_"

"_Before I answer that, I'm askin' you to cut your sass some. Let's say I'm somebody who knows about your situation. I also know more than you do about it, right about now,_" responded Pullahein. "_But if you got more interest in keepin' a hot head instead of gettin' your main problem solved, I'll hang up and leave you stewin' in your own angry juices._"

Heather let out a hot angry sigh, something like the opening the blast-door of a furnace after it's shut down for maintenance. Not as hot as it used to be when going full-blast, yet the air in there is still bound to be burnt. Just keep in mind that restarting the thing can happen in under one second. Just like Heather's fiery temper.

Not yet, though. _Okay, this complete jerk calls me out of the blue,_ thought Heather. _Don't know who he is or what horse he rode in on. He seems legit, though. If he turns out to be some prick who likes to make creepy calls to girls, I can always call Douglas' agency to have the jerk's nuts chopped off or something._

"_You in a mood for ponderin' or palaver?_" asked Pullahein, his tinny voice through the telephone sounding even enough. "_'Cause if you got ponderin' to do, no problem. I'll call back._"

"No… Alright, I'll palaver," was her response. _Palaver? What kind of talk is that? Why's this guy talking like somebody who deals with cattle rustlers? _"So you said you know who's behind this screwy mess?"

"_Yeah, it's the odd prisoner. That's what he is and what we're callin' 'em. Wouldn't matter much if I done gave you his legal moniker,_" said Pullahein. "_Not in the least. He'd still be what he is. And what he is, he's high trouble, tappin' into powers of stuff that'll mess up your world if you don't stop 'em. Wise as he tries to seem, damn fool is like a kid with a box fulla TNEs. Dumb as rocks but too damned dangerous to know it._"

Heather thought about asking what _TNEs _are, then figured that doing so would take things too far off track. More importantly… "If you know about him and stuff, why didn't _you _stop him yourself? Why do I have to do your dirty work?"

"_Now you're bein' just plain selfish, girl,_" said Pullahein, contempt sounding through the telephone receiver. "_You think you're the only one who got problems? Where I'm callin' from, whole damned town is scared stupid 'cause they got some things comin' outta the woods that they've never seen before. Hunh… Just 'cause they scared, them townsfolk think they got a right to pack up and run away. Runnin' ain't gonna solve a thing, because the problem is still gonna be here, gettin' to be a little like that _other _town you know full-well about. Makin' short of long, can't help you. My posse and I got other stuff to do, big stuff. So here's me passin' the torch off to you, 'cause my role is just about done here._"

"Yeah, whatever," went Heather. "You want me to deal with this odd prisoner-person to make it all stop, right? Well that's just great. Now if only somebody would get around to telling me where the Hell that creep is."

"_Can't rightly say where he is at this exact-same minute,_" began Pullahein. "_But I can tell you where he's headed. You probably won't be able to cut 'em off at the pass since he's got a head start and all, even if you'll be wantin' to cut off his head._" He paused. "_Heather Mason, you know where he's goin'._"

At that moment, just then, Heather wanted to _slam _the telephone down—to _destroy _the telephone. Though Heather looks about as small and skinny as anything that walks a fashion-show walkway, there is certainly a lot of actual physical strength hidden in that petite body of hers. That strength was a faint shadow of what else was also inside her.

That otherness inside of Heather was coming up, brought on by anger. The edges of her vision took on a reddish tinge, along with edges of anger that were not human, too powerful to ever be human. Sheer anger of a brutal intensity…

_That _town again, that's what set Heather's emotional furnace going worse than it was for a mere ringing telephone. _That _town, abandoned and left alone, though things in that town were _never _alone, things with twisted and strange bodies obscured by fog. _That _town, it kept causing her so much trouble again and again…_and again some more._ No matter how far Heather went down along the roads and paths of her life, sometimes those roads of fate just kept turning back to _that _town.

When we are talking _Silent Hill_—_that _town—we are talking about a powerful place, a place with enough metaphysical mojo to make anybody's life go there for whatever reason. And too often, people who went there…didn't…come…back. Doesn't matter how bad-ass a dude is, doesn't matter how tough, _that town can kick anybody's ass. _That town not only kicks ass, it'll single-handedly beat a whole planet of ass-kickers in an ass-kicking contest any day of the year, any year of the century, any century of the millennium, and any millennium of any eon. (Some folks are asking what an _eon _is. Okay, just know that _eon _is an amount of time so long that it's not too far from eternity.)

Back to the story. That's because not only is Silent Hill just a place, it's a place that's a _situation _in the universe—the fabric of time and space, the very same stuff of reality itself, is pretty damned messed up there. Compared to Silent Hill, the Bermuda Triangle is a tropical vacation spot. Unless you've got a damned good reason to go there or have powers that'll beat Cyclops, Wolverine and all the X-Men combined (hah, good luck with that), don't go there.

Luckily, Heather has her own demon abilities on tap, along with a killer android-girl equipped with nuclear-powered pistols. Never mind superheroes for now.

"Yeah," said Heather to Pullahein over the phone. "I'll go Silent Hill to follow the odd prisoner. And when I find him…" Her green eyes went wide, eyes that just might have darkened a little bit—darkening like shadows. "When I find him, I'll make sure he can never cause trouble ever again." Then Heather hung up the phone without so much as a _see you around._ Time for her to get a move-on…but not before washing up and putting on some undies.

…

2.

…

Speaking of getting a move-on, the odd prisoner and his own sidekick were already well on their way. Moving and grooving, that's what they were doing—though the odd prisoner would frown upon such low-brow language. _Grooving _connotes rather uncouth and slovenly behavior befitting those who immerse themselves in carnal desires. Well, okay then. The odd prisoner was already getting to where he was going—and getting there in style.

He, the odd prisoner, was currently riding deep and comfortable in the warden's limousine. Oh yeah, the big fat-man's stretch-mobile was now _the odd prisoner's _mobile, getting this transportation done with luxury and ease. Though there was something to be said about a man taking comfort in a long, hard vehicle that _glides _through forest-roads and penetrates distances, the odd prisoner would have none of that discussion.

As for the odd prisoner himself, it was only appropriate that he be suitably stylin'. Dude was decked out in a long red robe over some kind of silk shirt-thing. The robe had on it all kinds of symbols that some people might recognize and some that could not be recognizable unless someone had eyes that saw in six dimensions. Oh yes, and the odd prisoner's head was now completely emptied of hair—gleaming like an ivory cue-ball. (Heh, skull-ball.) Just as no hair covering the top of his gleaming melon, he also had nothing covering his feet. If the odd prisoner had hairy feet, one of J.R.R. Tolkien's hobbits would agree with such foot-loose shoeless shenanigans, if not with the evil intentions. In which case, Sauron would agree. Disappoint the hobbits but not Sauron. Well, can't please everybody—shoeless shenanigans notwithstanding.

Beside the odd prisoner and his bald-headed, robe-wearing, bare-footed self, the other two people riding back in the passenger compartment of the limousine were more mundanely dressed but stylin' nevertheless. Jimmy's prisoner-garb was swapped out for buttoned-white dress shirt, a red tie and black pants, a black business jacket completing the outfit. He had on black shiny shoes, too. Unlike somebody else riding back here_, _he still had human fur covering the top of his noggin. In fact, Jimmy's head-fur was well-combed and neat—upon the insistence of the odd prisoner. Oh, and the warden was riding back here too.

Because this was the warden's limousine, don't think the warden is going to be left out. And was he stylin'? Come on… That coke-headed fat man _always_ has on something well-tailored and well-priced. From the moment he leaves his mansion to run his part of the world to when he comes back after midnight, he is _always _in his business clothes—buttoned shirt (extra-_extra_ large), necktie (needing to be long enough around to hog-tie a hippopotamus), business jacket (made of enough material to make sails for a whole fleet of pirate ships, mateys) and tailored slacks (which weren't really slack because the tailors can't seem to make those things big enough without disrupting the world's supply of silk).

Now listen, if somebody without political connections made any of the before-given parenthetical comments like that to the warden's face before today, the warden would probably do something like have that person killed and served up for dinner or something. Gosh, not too many people know what's _really _in the meat-products coming out of some New Jersey food-factories nowadays. New Jersey was a ways away from here, and so were the meat-processing slash corpse-disposal buildings, but the warden could make things happen.

The warden could have done that before. Not anymore, though. Now the warden was sitting there, slumped over his ginormous gouda-gut, his head down, jaw bent into about half a dozen chins. (With that many chins, who needs a neck?) He was like this not because some nose-candy had its chemical hooks in his brain. Nah, it was more like something else had it's chemical-works embedded in him.

Before we move onward and forward—schmoozin' and cruisin' along in this _stylin' _long-mobile—think about the term _monkey on one's back. _If you don't know what that means, go ask your parents or somebody else who lived back in the heady hey-days of sex, drugs and rock-n'-roll. Having a _monkey on one's back, _that was the wink-and-nod way of saying that somebody was addicted to something that was probably illegal. And if it wasn't illegal yet, it would be. Horse, coke, barbs, bennies, uppers, downers, whatever, whenever, however… Now, class, let's have an example of the before-discussed term. Like this. Because the big fat warden was a big fat fan of cocaine (among other things), the warden _has a monkey on his back _(wink-wink, nod with a knowing grin).

If seen from a side, how he was seated, one could see that the warden had a big fat hole in the big fat back of his business jacket. Ditto for the white shirt worn underneath, the skin and fatty layer underneath that (and what a layer that was), right down to some of the cartilage in the discs of his spine. Though one could see the hand-sized hole in his clothes, one could not see the damage to his flesh—because that was covered over by _the reddish slug-like parasite on his back. _Hell yeah… How's _that _for a knowing wink and a nod?

That thing is no monkey. In fact, that thing doesn't even look like a mammal. Maybe it looks something like a slug, yet just because something looks like a thing doesn't mean that it is. No slug is a foot and a half in length and can attach to a human body.

Attach to a human body and take it over, that is. Don't expect any sort of knowing winks or nods from the warden now, because the warden's big fat body is now under new management. And though the warden's body was being controlled, the warden's mind was still in it…sort of. If one looked into the warden's eyes, one could almost imagine seeing into the eyes of somebody who was lost in the sauce, his brain drugged and out of the picture. (Well okay, drugged with the parasite's slow-venom, not with the usual stuff sold by Ace, the friendly neighborhood pharmacist of controlled substances.)

Given what we know of the warden, some people might be cheering this situation—especially people who happen to be secretaries, and especially secretaries who have been screwed by their bosses in more ways than one. So the warden wouldn't be worth our sympathy. More like, he'd be deserving of a steel-toed boot in the nuts and something shoved up his ass without any sort of lubricant.

Good riddance to the warden. Hope the parasite has a ball with its new host-body. Ride that sucker 'till the legs fall off. Even then, keep riding it until the same happens with the arms.

Jimmy could not help but have some sympathy, though. He heard rumors about the warden having done not-so-nice things, talk about the warden having done some nose-candy and doing some secretaries when he ought to be running the penitentiary—along with the inter-prison talk about the warden's family having hands in things on the other side of the law. If the Kennedy clan could do it, why not? Regardless of what people said, Jimmy didn't think that _anybody _could deserve what happened to what warden, what is still happening with the warden.

The odd prisoner saw Jimmy's concerned look and sighed. "I would not worry overly much about our portly friend. He is not suffering. Quite the opposite is true, in fact. Observe…"

When the odd prisoner made one of those right-hand gestures of his, the parasite on the warden's back reacted somehow. The warden jerked upright, a loud groaning _moan _coming from his open mouth—as if the warden was in the throes of that most severe of carnal pleasures. Then he went slack again.

Continued the odd prisoner, "His mind is adrift in a questionably blissful sea of chemical euphoria. It is the way of this parasite. If the parasite's host was to experience pain and suffering, then future host-bodies would be much less receptive, the host species more disinclined to falling victim. It is for this reason that parasites of this sort were able to overcome entire population centers and do so with ease. Such has not occurred in this world, of course." He smiled with that shiny bald head of his, a shiny head with a dark smile. "Not yet, at the least."

Look away… Jimmy turned his head to the right, looking out at the darkness that covered the passing scenery, must be covering that scenery. At first, he had a mental flashback to _another _time when he was riding in a vehicle—one that traveled a roadway absolutely steeped in darkness. Those were the night-time dream-time rides with…her. (Jimmy didn't even trust himself to specify _who _in his mind right about now, thinking that the odd prisoner might pick up on what he was thinking. We know who Jimmy had those other-worldly jaunts with.)

This wasn't a dream, though. This was waking life even if some details of it were just so wrong. What jailbird would ever expect to a ride out of the state pen courtesy of _the warden's personal limo?_ Even then, who would ever expect to see the warden getting taken over by some kind of body-snatcher thing?

Jimmy took a look at the warden. The warden, a big fat in a big fat business suit, slumped over his gigantic gut that looked large enough to hold another few human beings in it like the first human case of male pregnancy (probably with sextuplets in there), and with _a creature attached to his back._ Sad, really. Scary at first, but it really was sad.

"Though getting over your initial trepidation is a beneficial development, I nevertheless sense a sort of resentment at your situation," said the odd prisoner. "One would presuppose a larger sense of enjoyment of you having escaped your unjust incarceration."

A quick and cold feeling rushed through Jimmy, snatching him away from his meandering thoughts—returning him to here and now. "Uh… Yeah." _Gotta try sounding more convincing that that._ "Yeah, yeah! I'm glad! But how'd you know I was really innocent? That woman…" _Idiot! _Jimmy shut himself up before saying anything about the dead woman.

The odd prisoner tilted his head to the right. "Oh, I believe that you know of my sources of knowledge. Have you not experienced it for yourself? I wove for you a pattern upon a wall, by which even you as a less-than-novice acolyte could see worlds beyond by way of fits and glimpses. It was in such a way that I was quite easily able to see the pattern and the truth. It is the death of a woman of no consequence, and a wealthy man responsible for your subsequent imprisonment. Take heart, for they are but specks of meat upon one world of many." The odd prisoner's eyes took on a far-seeing look, seeing beyond Jimmy and this limousine—seeing beyond and into other places. "We are involved in the business of _entire worlds._ Weighed against such exquisitely grand fortunes of worlds, what are the lives of a few petty human beings? Other worlds, my witness. _Other worlds_"

Other worlds, eh? Thanks, but no thanks. Jimmy would much prefer to stay in this one. The most traveling Jimmy had ever done in his waking life was a trip to Canada. Some friends once invited him to take a trip down to Mexico, but Jimmy's Spanish went little beyond _si senor._ Never mind if more Mexicans can speak English than American _gringos _can speak Spanish. And never-mind it if people come from non-English speaking countries and speak the language better than those born in the States. Whatever. Jimmy would prefer to give a _non _to this offer. Dealing with other worlds? _Traveling_ to other worlds? Not even NASA astronauts get that far—unless the UFO-crash conspiracy people are right on the money about some stuff going on behind the scenes.

Too late now, though. Jimmy's trans-dimensional vista wasn't stamped, his cross-cosmic cultural skills are almost nil, but here he goes any damned way. Just like those trips with the dead woman in that car, rides along highways that don't run through this world, there is no exiting this ride—probably not even the exit of death. However, Jimmy wasn't going to die yet. His role wasn't done.


	18. Chapter 18

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

"The Adversary" Lyrics and Vocals by _Crime and The City Solution_

Chapter 18

…

1.

…

It wasn't until the afternoon that Heather and Intemelessy got a move on. Given the desperation of the situation, some folks would take to the idea that just maybe those two ought to put the pedal to the metal and move faster. Slow as post-drought Virginia molasses in winter, some might say. Well, Heather wasn't in a hot hurry because what happened has already happened. When the call came about who the fork was behind the trouble, it _was _said that there was no way to beat the odd prisoner to the punch.

And so Heather got herself ready…eventually. The girl didn't do much to get herself ready for the day beyond the usual. A morning run, a shower, a change of clothes, more than a few bites to eat (pretty darned hungry this morning, probably from getting psyched up to cause some trouble herself), and the girl was ready to rock.

Of course, Intemelessy didn't have to do a damned thing—being synthetic-bodied and all. All that Intemelessy had to do was rinse her synthetic skin if dust was ever a concern. In addition, there was never a need for her to exercise—just like those action-movie heroes. Action heroes, super-skilled even if you never see them train. Super-smart even if you never see them reading much. And more like a character out of an action movie, Intemelessy was unreal. That's what happens when you're an artificial being.

And at noon, the two were sitting at the apartment's kitchen table, waiting for the cab. Heather looked at Intemelessy across the table—who looked right back. Now that's not nice. It's not polite to stare. Heather broke off the look by taking a drink of water from a big glass, deciding to turn her visual attention to the view beyond the sliding glass doors that led to the fire escape. The girl's hazel eyes were lost in a stare that went beyond the glass, mind in thought…

This was her thinking about _that _town. How _wrong _it was in some ways. Thirst, why was that always a problem in going there? For whatever reason, every single time Heather went to _that _town, going there made her really thirsty. Really, _really _thirsty, as if the changed foggy atmosphere of that place did something to one's throat and skin, sucking the moisture right out.

And then, for whatever reason, odd drinkable artifacts from other worlds tended to left around there for a person to consume—like those little dark bottles of health drinks. That's not the only thing. The first time Heather went to that town in her current life, there were other supplies left out for anybody to just use up. All kinds of stuff, even ordnance. Boxes of nine-millimeter rounds, shotgun shells, whole submachinegun mags. Can't use bullets without firearms, so there were firearms left lying around too.

Who the _heck _was doing that? Having been to that abandoned town a few times, Heather never found out. Who…or what, maybe. Maybe some kind of benevolent force was there to counter all the crackhead level of craziness and evil. Yes, it was a benevolent and loving unseen presence that left all kinds of nicely appropriate things one must utilize _to slaughter the forces of darkness. _And that same presence left those health drinks because killing malformed creatures of darkness and madness is thirsty business.

_Being thirsty_, thought Heather. _Now that's another thing Intemelessy would never have to worry about…unless android-girl drinks motor oil on the sly_. _In my next life, maybe I oughtta be an android-girl too_. _Hmmph, androids aren't born, so forget about that. Maybe I'd just have to settle for being part-robot. What do they call them? Cyborgs? Who knows, maybe a few years from now there'll be some kinda technology to make people part-robot in this world. _Heather's attention was drawn to the rectangular shapes buildings out there in the city afternoon. _A few years from now, if humans don't nuke civilization out of existence, that is._

"Our transport has arrived," came Intemelessy's announcement. "Taking into consideration demographic factors including population density and vehicular traffic, the vehicle has arrived in below-average time."

Heather opened her mouth to ask how Intemelessy knew how their ride arrived…just as the cab out front gave a loud and jaunty _bee-bee-beep. _Not having anything to say after all, Heather closed her mouth—not being in the habit of having her pie-hole hang open lest a fly go in or something. (Ever hear of shoo-fly pie?) Intemelessy probably has some kind of super-hearing to go with the rest of her robot-abilities, so there's no need to ask.

…

Outside the too-quiet apartment building, the place not having inhabitants to replace those killed on that vicious and murderous day, the gold-yellow taxicab sat idling curbside. Intemelessy climbed in first, paused for an annoying half-second second to look around, then slid aside for Heather to come in as well.

Went a thought in Heather's mind, _What, does Intemelessy always have to be on guard?_ Yes, well… Intemelessy is always vigilant—being true to her…programming. Heather figured that a person can't say _being true to her nature _about Intemelessy because that girl is not natural.

The cab driver got this car moving as soon as Heather closed the door. "Hey wait," said Heather. "I didn't even tell you where we're going."

"Ya called it in, right?" asked the cab driver, a round-headed guy with a porkpie-cap shoved down over his somewhat wily hair. He got this car up to speed on. "Course you did. Else, I wouldn't know. Yeah, I know yer destination. Ain't a problem."

"Yeah, I called. But I was gonna say…" said Heather, hesitating. _Was gonna tell you that we're headed for a place where bogeymen live for real. _"You _do _know we're going to Silent Hill, right?"

"Which is why they made me take yer fare," said the cab driver. He shrugged with his right shoulder, left hand still on the steering wheel. "They know me, down at the station. Anytime somebody wants to go to that place, I'm there to get 'em across to there. It's not too often that somebody goes to where all the oogley-boogleys are rumored to live. Monsters, hah!"

"It _is _kinda on the dangerous side," insisted Heather. "I thought you might want to know before you end up running into trouble ahead of time."

"Nah… No worries," responded the cab driver. He took a right turn, then a left. "Like I said, this ain't the first time a fare asked to go there. Whatever business you people wanna handle there, not my worry. All I know is, people go there more often than oughtta healthy. Some of them probably for the same reason that dumb idiots ride flimsy planes through the Bermuda Triangle or climb crazy-tall mountains that have already been climbed before. Dumb idiots get killed or disappear all the same, all for a thrill." His smile was visible through the rear-view mirror, a shake of his head. "Kids these days…"

"I'm _not_ a kid," said Heather not too kindly. "I might not look it, but let's just say I've been around the block more than a few times."

"More than once, huh? Sounds like one of them believers in _reincarnation_," said the cab driver, looking through the ceiling-mounted rear-view mirror to make brief eye-contact with Heather in the back seat.

That's another thing that Heather didn't like about this cab driver. Heather didn't like mirrors. And the way the cabbie was using the mirror to make eye-contact during this conversation, it was as if this guy was more annoying than he ought to be.

And Heather let him know it too. Why not? The girl was paying for this wondrous expedition. "Anybody ever tell you that you've got an irritating way of saying the wrong stuff?"

The cab driver gave a chuckle. "Depends on what ya mean by the wrong stuff," he said. "And irritating? Irritating like a _gadfly_, maybe. Wasn't too long ago in human history that some smart guy bragged about being annoying for a good reason. Of course, he gladly lived off whatever free bread and cheese the locals would give him for talking instead of driving a cab. They didn't have motor-vehicles back then. Horse-drawn chariots and ferrymen to get across rivers, but no yellow motor-cars."

In her random literary meanderings of stuff bought from the bookstore, along with drinking plenty of flavored coffee (and the occasional tipple of something alcoholic), Heather recalled reading something about an ancient philosopher who called himself a gadfly. It was some really, really famous guy too. Who was it? For whatever reason, the name escaped her. Well, whatever. What the guy said and was put down in the philosophy books was probably more important than his name. The message is more important than the messenger.

No name but doing something big, it's just like how that creep called _the odd prisoner _didn't need a name. All he needed was a message… He also needed to have his crazy head ripped off his neck, too. Yes indeed, Heather Mason was going to make sure that creep called the odd prisoner was good and dead when all this fun is done.

"Hey toots, I know what'll cheer ya up," said the cab driver. "How about some music? You kids like music. This cab's got a pretty good sound system. Course, the reception sorta bugs out whenever it wants…" He turned on the cab's radio, the radio for picking up entertainment broadcasts, not the one used to communicate with the cab dispatcher.

So began a tune on the radio—beginning with a rambling a few strums of a bass guitar to start the rambling of an electronic organ and drum. A gutsy male vocalist began proclaiming the lyrics…

You see me in foreign face

In ships that sink without trace

In your father's doubt

…when it brings on shout

Behind the burning cross

…the grudged imagined loss

When you

…run-n-n to me

… run-n-n to me

… run-n-n to me

You try to fly

But you cannot fly

You try to hide

…but I'm by your side

You

…run from me

…run from me

…run from me

I am the _Adversary!_

I am the _Adversary!_

I am the _A-a-d-ver-sary…_

_Now wait a sec, _thought Heather, looking to Intemelessy sitting next to her. Intemelessy kept looking ahead as if everything was all-systems go. Everything _wasn't _peachy keen, because _something _about that song's lyrics really got to Heather. It wasn't something that Heather could exactly explain right now. That part of her which let her use other-worldly abilities was telling her that something about that tune was just not right at all. _I am the A-a-adversary, _went the radio. "Turn it off."

"Ya got it, toots," said the cab driver, turning off the radio. "Something 'bout that song bother ya? C'mon… It's just a song, ain't it?"

"It isn't just a song, and you know it. You played that on purpose," said Heather, crossing slender arms. "In fact, it's like you know more than what you're saying. What you say, the way you act… There's something really, really screwy about you. So what is it?"

"What? Me? Weird?" went the cab driver, looking a bit like a satirical comic-book character. _What, me worry?_ "I'm nothin' but a cabbie, baby! Been a cabbie since… whenever. A cabbie's the most normal kinda guy ya'd ever meet, right up there with bus drivers and janitors. We're just workin' folks, is all. We know a little about a lot, but we don't know a lot about a little. If we did, they'd pay us the big bucks to be rocket-ship mechanics or something."

Our girl wasn't having it. Said, "Sounds to me like you're trying to feed me a few lines of what comes out of the horse's rear end."

"_Woah-h-h!_" went the cab driver. "No need to get all nasty. Some folks have said some pretty grimy stuff about what I tell 'em, but it's not too often they compare it to what's soft, dark and smelly. More like they say it's _me _who's like stuff that's soft, dark and smelly."

Heather looked to Intemelessy. "Intemelessy, I've still got the feeling that something's not kosher about this guy. Use those super-duper android powers of yours to tell me what's wrong with this picture."

It took Intemelessy a long two seconds. Said the android-girl, "Taxi driver, a cursory analysis indicates that you are behaving in a camouflaging manner. Your speech patterns fail to match all of those found in the cultural archetype local speech among those of the working class.

"Data point, you said _ain't a problem. _Local dialects that see the archaic usage of _ain't _use it in double negatives_._ In such a context, you would have said _ain't no problem._

"Additional data point, you vacillate between using _ya _and _you. Ya _is a corruption of _you_. You have used both the corrupt and proper form of the word within the same informal context.

"Additional data point, you deliberately slurred the –_ing _in the word _nothing _to further disguise your true speech patterns. Your prior usages of _–ing _as a suffix were not slurred, as in your pronouncing the adjective _irritating._ Of added prominence is…"

"Okay, okay! I give up!" said the cab driver. "Maybe I'm not just a cabbie. But if I said anything, I'd be just about as comfortable as blondie back there telling the world about _her _origins. That's sort of unfair, since the girl already announced out loud what _you _are, Intemelessy."

When Heather spoke, it was in a very even but very angry tone of voice. "You'd better shut up about me. Right now."

"Gotcha," said the cab driver. "Still, it's only fair since you figured something out about me. You, me, Intemelessy, we've all gotta pass for normal, right? The locals wouldn't be too happy about finding out that some girl or guy see isn't a bona-fide native. Hell, the locals don't even like some of their own species. You get a human being that worships a different brand of dieties, talks a different language, or beds with the same sex even sometimes, and suddenly they're all over that."

Heather looked out the window instead of responding. _Points taken, _thought the girl. Not that Heather was too keen on worshipping anything—given past run-ins with a certain religion gone wrong. Yes indeed, Heather Mason is a short-sized but long-standing believer in…nothing in particular. And funny how the cab driver hit right on people speaking a different language. There was another language that Heather knew other than English, a language which did not come from this world. Throw in how the cabbie knew to pick up Heather being a… Uh, the _l_ word. And the _l _doesn't stand for _lollipop_, either.

Yes indeed, _funny_ how the cab driver picked those particular examples of intolerance among humanity, just how it was _funny _the cab driver turned on _that _song at _that _second when it started up. If things got any funnier with the cabbie, maybe someone would convince him to do stand-up comedy. That is, if people didn't mind it if some of what he said cut too close to the truth. Too damned close.

This vehicle was also damned close to their destination all of a sudden. Here Heather was, looking out the right-side window and not even noticing the change until just now. Outside the cab, the highway air was taking on a distinctly foggy color—or lack of color. It was making things look less distinct and more hazed.

"It's supposed to take longer than this to go to Silent Hill from my apartment," said Heather. "How are we almost there already?"

"Would ya believe it if I said _shortcut?_" asked the cabbie innocently. "Nah, ya wouldn't. How about _magic?_ C'mon, everybody likes a good magic trick! Abra-cab-dabra, hocus-bogus! We're going places, so take us outta focus! I'd wave my arms to make all the right gestures while saying the words too, but that would mean taking my hands off the wheel. That wouldn't appear professional, would it?" His voice went a little more quiet. "Yeah… Watch out for magicians. They can be a bad bunch sometimes."

…

2.

…

This sun-colored vehicle already passed the _Welcome to Silent Hill _sign a ways back. Now they were really in the fog, which was the true welcome sign of this place. That mist and fogginess was now in full effect. It was just a gentle and faint discoloration to the air miles away from here. But now that one was here, here and now, the stuff was so thick that Heather's eyes couldn't see more than three car lengths ahead. Nope, this place just wouldn't be the same without that pea-soup ground-cover to shroud everything in depths of swirling mist.

When and where the cab driver stopped this vehicle, the cab's engine was making a disturbing grumbling noise, so he had to speak up to be heard. "Alright, kiddo! This is about as far as I can take you. You're gonna have to hoof it from here on in. Much as I'd like to party with you, this is where we'll have to part ways. This-here horseless carriage can only go so far into that town."

_Horseless carriage? Great, now here's another joker who borrows stuff from cowboy-talk, _thought Heather. Horseback discussions aside, the cab driver did have a point. The cab sounded just fine all the way here. Meaning, it was as quiet as any well-maintained modern vehicle. Now the thing was sounding as if it was having a little bit of engine trouble—heavily grumbling and rumbling that made this vehicle shimmy even while it idled.

Said Heather, "Okay, I won't keep you here." The girl leaned to a side and reached into her right pocket for some of her money—getting out a pre-folded bill. (Funny thing about American English, a note of currency is sometimes called a _bill_.) "Here you go." And that was when Heather felt the chill.

Chill? Hell, it felt like a fridge. Between the passenger compartment and the front seats, the difference in temperature was like Florida autumn and Canadian winter.

The cab driver reached over his right shoulder to accept the cash without looking at it. And in that moment, Heather pulled her right hand back because the cab driver himself seemed more than a little chilly. "Hey, a _fifty!_ Nineteen-dollar tip, huh?"

"Yeah, that's right," said Heather, shrugging and suddenly feeling self-conscious about giving the cabbie that much. "Don't spend it all in one place." Though the girl had heapin' hoards of cash in multiple bank accounts, Heather was still in the habit of being careful about money spent. (Dollar-store sneakers…)

True, Heather was a damned millionaire too many times over to matter. Yet there were still little moments like this—physically handing over actual money—reminded her of the real value of currency. It reminded the girl about those times spent in having to actually work for money. Those were days when her dad was still alive and getting by on the money he made from the books he wrote, while also leaving Heather to work to earn her own keep.

_Dad_, thought Heather. This town killed her father. Heather in turn killed something big hiding within this abandoned town, and that should've been the end of the story with her and this place. It wasn't. _Why the Hell am I thinking about dad at a time like this?_

"Let's get this over with, Intemelessy," said Heather suddenly, opening the cab door on this side to step onto the concrete-gray sidewalk—a sidewalk seeming even more gray due to the midday fog.

"Affirmative," said Intemelessy, her slight accent making it sound like _affirmatiff. _Cutely different accent or none, the android-girl was all business, already out and walking around the back of the cab to stand by Heather's side.

With both his passengers delivered, the cab driver put the cab in gear. But before he drove away, he leaned way over to the right and rolled down the car window to shout something over the grumble of his vehicle's malfunctioning engine, "_I'll tell yer dad that ya said hi._" Then he looked ahead, put the cab into a tight u-turn and drove back the way they came.

_Tell my dad…? _"Wait a second!" yelled Heather, suddenly finding herself running after the cab, a sun-colored vehicle that rapidly vanished into the fog.

Of course, short-skinny Heather, being a skosh under five feet tall and not as fast as someone taller than her (anyone of average height), the girl wasn't going to catch that cab. Yet Intemelessy could run a damned sight faster than any human and would have no problem catching the vehicle. Catch it and probably throw it, too. Yet one key current mission priority was that of being Heather's bodyguard. Intemelessy would not dash away and leave any sort of opportunity for an enemy to get at Heather. So Heather didn't catch the cab. So Intemelessy did not reach it either. So sad, too bad.

"The vehicle is gone," stated Intemelessy, slowing to a stop as Heather did the same. "I am unable to detect it visually or audibly."

_No duh!_ Instead of saying that out loud, all that Heather could do for now was give loud heavy breaths, slumping over a bit. Though Heather got her jogging done most every day, what happened just now was more a mad dash, an all-out sprint. Being all riled up from what the cab-driver said made her burn up endurance even faster than that.

"He…disappeared just like that… Huh?" went Heather. Breathe, breathe… "I heard it…" Breathe… "Like it just…" Breathe. "Disappeared!"

"Correct," said Intemelessy. "The vehicle left a brief infrared signature within the fog prior to its almost instantaneous departure."

"Vanishing…just like a sci-fi spaceship," said Heather, already recovering her normal breathing. See that? Jogging pays off after all. "Like it's got warp-speed and everything. But how can he reach my dad when my dad's…?"

"I have insignificant data to form a flawless hypothesis," stated Intemelessy. And that was all Intemelessy said about it.

That's right. For all the gigabits and terabits and all kinds of gazillions of loads of data in Intemelessy's computer-mind, the android-girl doesn't know everything and just told Heather that accordingly. Heather didn't believe it, though. Intemelessy was supposed to be programmed to be super-smart about all kinds of weird stuff, and this wasn't working.

Heather gave a hard stare to Intemelessy, the android-girl's eyes looking as passive and as glassy as camera-lenses. Then Heather blinked and looked away. There's no winning a staring contest with a robot. Might as well try winning a drinking contest with the robot while you're at it. An android can stare for quite a ways into the otherwise-infinite distance of eternity, never blinking, always looking ahead at what must be done—like what has to be done now. Heather and Intemelessy came to this messed-up abandoned town to get something done, and that something didn't involve tests of eyeball-moisture endurance or the ability to consume gallons of alcoholic beverages.

"Never mind," said Heather, looking around with her eyes, then using a touch of her abilities to look around with her mind…. _Over there. _"This way. I know where we have to go."

With Heather leading the way, Intemelessy fell into step from the rear. Heather knew where to go because it _felt _like the correct way to go. The same deeper part of Heather that could summon up those unseen servants, the same part of her that could open doors just by thinking about them, that part of her inner-self was sensing the way forward. That _other _part of Heather meshed very well with the _otherness _of this abandoned town—with the town's spiritual fabric. After all, Heather was born here, had died here, and was reborn into her current form. The cab driver was right about Heather being a believer in reincarnation, the girl herself being living proof. Her adopted father was only human and couldn't do the same. Dad is dead.

And then there are some people who deserve to be made dead. As in, _killed_. As Heather walked the quiet streets of this fog-enshrouded, abandoned town, her thoughts turned from those of her dead father to those of the person who had to be stopped—the odd prisoner. He killed all the people in Heather's apartment that day in trying to kill her, and he would no doubt kill plenty more just because he felt like it. Well, Heather felt like killing _him_…wherever he was.


	19. Chapter 19

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 19

…

1.

…

Heather and Intemelessy walked the famous fog-ridden streets of this town—seemingly at a meandering and wandering pace but actually headed for one place in particular. Just like following driving directions along the psychotically winding highways of some state like New Jersey or Ohio, they'll get there…eventually—even if it means taking a million turns that go sideways to their intended destination. Mists gently floating, the wind almost nil, things were going as they were going. And…

And some people might get the idea that something was not quite right here. That is, something other than the fact that _an entire town was empty of human inhabitants for over a decade _and _there's no way that a place should have thick fog every day of the year._ Something's out of whack. Anyone who has even heard a _hint _of a _whisper _of a _rumor _of a _clue _about what goes on in this screwed-up town ought to know that something's missing.

Let's see now. Going down the list, from the top... Do we have our abandoned streets and buildings? Check, dudes. Have we got creepy-ass fog? Check-a-roo on that too. Also, do we have somebody who came here for a damned good reason—head problems, problems with relatives, a reason usually involving dead folks? Check-a-roonie, put on a boonie. We went down that list and have a _go _for each. Now, what could _possibly _be missing?

Goodness gracious, let's not go through that checklist again. Let's swap our Vietnam-era boonie-hats for deerstalker caps. Some people are thinking, _What the fork is a deerstalker cap?_ Well, anybody who's seen pictures or cartoons of an old-time English detective knows what it's all about. A deerstalker cap one of those wooly-furry light brown things you put on your head with flaps coming down the sides, a funny little cloth-knob button on the top and… Ah, screw it. Sherlock Holmes wears them—or used to wear them when he was alive. (Was he buried wearing one? Go look that up if you want. Not now, though. We've got stuff to do.) It's deerstalker caps for everybody because we're going to solve…The Mystery of What is Missing From Heather's Latest Walk Through Silent Hill.

First clue, all the people who used to live in this town didn't just vanish because of altered meteorological conditions. It's not like they were all like, _Oh fiddlesticks. This fog is just awful and we should all just move away._

Who the heck says _fiddlesticks_, even back then? Schoolmarms and grandparents trying to put on a good face for the kiddies, that's who. But you'd best believe that people used the grand-slam f-bomb back then, along with a wide selection of cuss-words and trash-talk that would make a biker give a thumbs-up and a grin. And if your parents tell you that they didn't use the f-word, the b-word, the s-word or multiple variations thereof, they're _lying _to you.

Parents tend to lie, sometimes. It's like the one about a fat man who gruntingly jams himself into people's chimneys every Christmas night before ejecting the load in his sack. Raised by lying parents, or at least parents that lie more than usual. A shame…

No, it's not that the people of Silent Hill vanished after shouting _fiddlesticks _in fog or had parents that lied one too many times_. _It was more like, _What the Hell are those things that just ate my spouse and is coming after me next? Aa-a-a-ah…!_ Such sentiments would usually be followed by the totally awesome sounds of something awesome from another world going to work on a human victim—all _crunch_, _rip_, and _splat_… Hells yeah.

Then there are those who just up and disappeared right out of this universe. Remember, this town is one of those places where there are the metaphysical equivalents of potholes—yeah, big goofy gaps in reality so big that folks fall in them and are never heard from again. Gotta do something about those potholes.That's what some local politicians would say…or not. Having government fix _anything _would mean raising tax dollars. Nowadays, politicians talk about raising taxes the same way that the Devil would talk about feeding orphans—not likely. Never mind if this is a moot point since this world's pathetic level of technology has nothing in the way of fixing the very fabric of reality.

Potholes in reality, weak spots in time and space… Not only do hapless human slobs fall into them, things also fall _out _of them—things from somewhere else. (Don't ask, _Mommy, where do babies come from? _Ask, _Mommy, where do monsters come from?_)Metaphysical potholes on a two-way street, that's where. Except the potholes _are _the two-way streets, going in and out of here. And the things that come _out _of the potholes aren't too polite or pretty most of the time.

Now, add it all up. The people who used to live here were either slaughtered on this plane of reality or probably fell into other universes before meeting their doom (_doo-o-o-oom_), and then one gets a bigger sense of the fog-ridden, monster-infested picture. Think about what happened to Heather's apartment and the penitentiary, and that picture becomes a bit more clearly—if a bit more messy due to all the blood and gore.

So, for those sleepyheads who didn't figure it out yet, that's actually the answer to The Mystery of What is Missing from Heather's Latest Walk Through Silent Hill. Where are all the freakin' _monsters_? Where are all the awesome things that can kill a whole townful of folks? Yeah, where are all the awesomely messed-up creatures that draw in the tourists from all over the world who come here for kicks and giggles—but mostly end up with screams and death-gurgles? (Come for the monsters. Stay for the slaughter.) The _monsters _are supposed to be the main attraction—like seeing celebrities in Los Angeles. Never mind if Los Angeles' fog has a definite brown tinge to it and is chock-full of carcinogenic goodness. The mystery deepens, into the fog…

_Something _is approaching Heather's little party of three. Nope, uh… It's not exactly something all with claws or jaws, wings or stings, not something that looks like a shambling wreck to the eyes of someone not from the world of its origin. Not a monster. More like, it's something else that could be considered just as awesome. And it's a damned sight too bad that Pullahein wasn't around to tell Heather about what was coming through the fog right about…_now_. 

Heather stopped. Intemelessy did the same. Thick, heavy clomping sounds rippled through the gray-hazed air. Heather was leaning forward a little and squinting those hazel-green eyes of hers (witch-hazel, one might say) as if trying to use x-ray vision to see through the too-thick gray wisps and drifts. X-ray vision is an ability that Heather doesn't have, an ability that actually belongs to somebody who wears underwear on the outside of clothes and has an _S _on the chest.

However, the girl's other sensing abilities _were _pretty damned strong just from being in this town. It was this other ability that let her mentally find the way forward. Trouble is, the ability wasn't telling her _what _was coming.

The thick, heavy clomping sounds matched an ever-growing and ever-darkening outline of _something _that was huge and dark, stomp-walking its mighty way in the middle of the street. (You'd best believe it was walking down the middle of the street. When you're something _that _big, cars had better get out of _your _way—rather than the other way around.) Getting closer, it seemed to be getting bigger still. As the clomping-stomping came ever-closer still, as the outline became bigger and darker, Heather just couldn't figure it out. Her other sense ought to have told her what it was, but it wasn't.

It was big. That's the first concern. It, the huge thing, stopped at the middle of this road. _It _looked dark because its bulbous armored torso was covered with some sort of dark metal alloy, equipped with two similarly armored arms. One arm ended in a three-fingered industrial metal-claw that looked as if it could rip a garbage truck like tin-foil after a cookout. Speaking of cooking, the other arm had a cannon-like weapon that looked more like something needing to be attached to a sci-fi warship instead of something that walked on land—even if that something was twelve feet tall and stomp-walking along a street on two reverse-jointed dark-metal legs. Think dinosaur or demon legs, only made out of metal. Lots of ladies talk about meeting somebody _tall, dark _and _handsome, _but this…

The thing had no head or visible sensors, yet it seemed able to know where Heather and Intemelessy stood. Stenciled in big letters on the left side of the armored robo-beast's body was something that must be its label or model designation—_Mk-63 Adversary._

Whatever world or forked-up alternate future that thing came from, it was built to last and looked here to stay. There would be no convincing that thing to politely turn around and let the girls pass—not the blonde one or the dark-haired android one.

_Whirr-r-r… Clack! _Its upper body rotated slightly to aim that sci-fi spaceship-cannon of destruction in this direction.

_Run from me. Run from me. Run from me. I am the… _Lyrics from that song skipped through Heather's mind just as Intemelessy snatched our girl around the midriff. "_Oof!_" was all Heather could get out as Intemelessy moved the both of them out of the way and behind a car.

In fact, by the time Heather reached the _f _in _oof, _they were already done moving. Intemelessy laid Heather behind this abandoned car.

Jeans-covered legs splayed out, slender tank-top covered back against the cool metal door of an abandoned car, sitting like a doll left behind by a careless owner, Heather wanted to yell at Intemelessy but couldn't—too busy sucking in breath. Right now, it felt like Heather's lower ribs had been swiped and gripped by too much pressure that stopped just short of breaking something. (Heh-heh, anything featuring the word _short _fits Heatherquite well.) The girl doesn't bruise easily despite being skinny as someone skinny as a fashion model or part-time ballerina. Doesn't bruise easily, yet Heather _does _bruise. Bruises would be forthcoming, and they'd likely be surefire winners. Still not able to yell, Heather glared.

Glared…until the foggy air took on a bright glare of its own—a _blast _of heat and light, the sound too loud to allow hearing afterward. Even behind this car, even though Heather was feeling hurt and numb (and probably about to throw up), the girl saw and felt the intensity of that event, feeling the intensity of the heat.

Intemelessy explained. "We are being targeted by a Mark-63 Adversary. My infrared-range vision detected a building heat signature within that Adversary's primary long-distance weapon. Extrapolating data from its technical specifications, we have eighteen seconds before it can fire again after such a discharge unless it has overridden its safety parameters."

"Adversary?" asked Heather between sucking sips of breath, her forearms crossed over her middle. "Giant…killer…robot, huh?" A pause. "Cousin of yours?"

"I am a synthetic flesh-type gynoid of human appearance," said Intemelessy. "The Adversary series of tactical combat machines are metal-type androids designed for full-scale combat in any battlefield environment, up to and including environments in which nuclear ordnance is utilized."

Heather wanted to ask some other questions like, _So, have you got Army stuff to stop that thing? _Or maybe ask, _Why aren't we running the Hell away? _It was too late to ask questions because Intemelessy suddenly dash-ran away herself.

Before anybody thinks that Intemelessy turned tail and hauled synthetic ass away from here, leaving Heather to the mercy of that massive thing in the street, think again. Heather thought that for a second before there was a very loud yet vaguely familiar sound—heard it when first meeting Intemelessy.

Sounding like thunder, brighter and more dangerous than natural lightning, Intemelessy was going to work with her dual nuclear-powered pistols set on rapid high-yield. Between the blasting shots of her weaponry, one could hear heavy mechanical whirrs and the occasional heavy clomping sound as the Mk-63 Adversary was _rocked _back on its massive armored robotic peds. And Intemelessy kept on firing.

No way should Intemelessy have had to fire those blasters more than a few times at anything. If something took more than a few hits from those handheld nuclear pistols of hers, then something was very wrong.

It hurt like anything and it was probably just about as stupid, yet Heather had to do something. It was a pain to pivot herself around on her knees. Pain in the rear-end? No, pain in her middle. So positioned in kneeling, Heather peeked over the hood of this abandoned car.

First visible was how the dark-armored robotic thing wasn't totally blackened anymore. Now the front of the massive thing's armored chest gave off a distinctly orange glow from having absorbed Intemelessy's blasts—the glow having a kind of incandescent aura in the thick fog.

Yup, the armor on that Adversary-thing _ate _Intemelessy's attacks. It was as if the big-huge thing was saying, _Mmm, your attacks are tasty. Got anything else for me, pretty little android-girl? If I had a mouth, I'd gobble _you _up next. _

Heather squinched up her eyelids when Intemelessy suddenly _blasted _the huge thing a few more times, only to see the thing only stagger…and _still _not go down. When the brightness from the glare faded off, Heather could see that the Mk-63 Adversary was still being an easy glutton for damage. And though Heather didn't have infra-red gadgetry for eyes, it didn't take robo-vison to see that the Mk-63 Adversary's arm-cannon was already powering up for another one of those mega-shots.

Which knocked Heather onto her ass _when the shockwave blasted the air. _Dazzles of pain played with Heather's vision before the girl was able to sit up and look over the edge of the car. No way could Intemelessy have survived that.

There was a small crater in the middle of the street, big enough for a car to fall into. Molten asphalt and dirt around the edges and at the small crater's bottom—yes, the blast being hot enough to melt dirt—made for a hot glow that was already getting muted and cooled. Intemelessy was nowhere in sight. Again, no way would Intemelessy be able to survive a blast like that.

Well, whoever said anything about her having to survive a blast like that? Intemelessy had used her inhumanly quick speed to get around behind the Mk-63 Adversary. The Adversary-thing was designed to do battle with enemy vehicles—not deal with synthetic girls that are quick on their feet. The Adversary fighting Intemelessy was like trying to use a wrecking ball to defeat a ninja. By the time that thing gets around to launch another wallop, that stealthy assassin could already have skipped nine times around the block. This case, all Intemelessy had to do was get around back.

Okay, so the Mk-63 Adversary isn't too great at this. One thing that wrecking balls and giant robots are good for, though, is mass destruction—able to lay waste to whole city blocks. Heather figured that if Intemelessy didn't take that thing down, maybe this town would be less of a tourist attraction if the place was reduced to rubble. Hey, let's go check out a few dozen square miles of wrecked houses and downtown buildings!

Yet even if it was laid to waste, blasted to smithereens by something from another world, the _otherness _of this town would still be here. Just wrecking the buildings and what-not would not obliterate the scars and wounds in the fabric of space and time—those portals and potholes in reality through which all the bad things came, the creepy crawlies, the flying freaks, all the nasty oogley-boogleys. And this time, the oogley-boogley was twelve feet tall and ready to rock. In fact, the way that the huge thing was raising a ruckus with its mighty energy weapon—a weapon with super-technology that had no business existing in this world yet—it was actually making things worse. The cosmic scars and gaps in the local fabric of reality were being deepened and ripped up just a little bit more every time that Adversary-thing used its mighty space-blasting nuke-cannon. That way, it would be _more _likely that _more _freaks from _more _worlds could come on through the already-flimsy fabric of reality. Come here to raise a ruckus.

_Hell no, _thought the girl. Any more freaks coming into her world from other places would be freaks that were not welcome. And maybe it was high time that Heather stopped being a deadbeat and started to _do _something instead of sitting by to watch the nuclear-powered fireworks.

_Whirr-r-r…_ Click. The Mk-63 Adversary's torso swiveled around on that big thick armor-ring connected to its leg-chassis. Meaning, its arm-cannon was swiveled around to face Intemelessy. (Wow, was it eighteen seconds already? Way over, in fact.) Before the _next _blast came, Heather was able to duck and squint her eyes. But before doing so, Heather had already glimpsed that Intemelessy had already blur-dashed out of the way. There goes _another _car-sized glowing crater in the street.

A thought went to summoning the unseen servants—those invisible yet powerful things which would serve Heather's will regardless of the consequences. Nope, Heather's thinking was already two steps ahead of that plan. The unseen servants would sense that Heather was hurt and in trouble. Then they would proceed to destroy anything and everything moving for blocks around, just to be on the safe side and protect her. The unseen servants might also destroy Intemelessy in their enthusiasm to defend Heather, yet Heather needs Intemelessy for backup. Intemelessy, who was dancing with some kind of robo-death right now…

There _was _something that could be done, maybe. Heather had done it in a previous lifetime, didn't even know if it was possible for her to do so in this one. (The thing about reincarnation is, dying and being reborn, lots of stuff gets lost before needing to be re-learned. Learning the alphabet, how to count, summoning other-worldly forces to fight on one's behalf, simple stuff like that.) Hell, her ability to summon the unseen servants only came back to her not too long ago.

_Don't knock it 'til you've tried it, _thought Heather, concentrating her thoughts a certain way, recalling skills of long ago, feeling… _Feeling the red edges of her power_ …

This time, the blasting didn't come from Intemelessy's portable artillery or the Adversary's spaceship blaster-cannon. Rather, the blasting came from lightning. _Red _lightning.

Raking, bright crimson jags of visible energy forked around the massive armored thing standing in this fog. Though one couldn't see where the crimson lightning was connected to from above, one could see where it was going. It was a lightning storm concentrated just over the huge thing, just like how one says that a person has thunderclouds over his or her head—except without the clouds or the mental rain to go with it. Pure lightning, baby.

When it was over, the Mk-63 Adversary stood there as if it wasn't quite sure what the fork just happened. Yeah, the Adversary was _forked _alright. That crimson lightning did a real job on its robotic and computerized insides. Now it wasn't able to put up a fight—warning beeps coming from acoustic resonance plates in its armor that served as speakers.

A lesson learned—being bad-ass and metal-armored is no guarantee of getting through an electrical storm. In fact, metal armor of any sort is the last thing a thing ought to have when faced with massive amounts of electricity—even if it wasn't quite electricity which did the damage. Electricity in appearing as lightning is supposed to be bright-blue or white, not _florescent red._ Whatever the color of the lightning, all the same, the twelve-foot robotic thing wasn't causing trouble now.

Of course, Heather's powers have costs—and then some. Heather was on her knees, hands to the sidewalk, her head bowed. Darkened dazzles of pain hazed over her vision even as the fog hazed over the street. _Don't pass out. Don't pass out. Don't pass out… _That mantra in mind, the girl was doing her best to…_not pass out._

It seemed easier said than done because…you know, the sidewalk was looking like a nice and comfortable place to lie down for a little while. So tempting. Let the swirl of fog wrap over her like a blanket as the exhaustion makes the cemented surface seem comfy as any bed. Aren't there cultures in the world where people sleep on hard surfaces? Hmm, yes there are. All Heather had to do was just...

Then Heather was again propped against the edge of the car again, a bottle of something cool put in the palms of her hands. A _pop, _and the top was off. (The top off the _drink, _not Heather's top. Darned perverts…) Somebody was telling her to drink it. Hard to tell who was talking to her, everything woozy and stuff. Who? Huh? _Wha-?_

"…_A health drink_," said Intemelessy, finally getting through Heather's hazed daze. "_It was located on the sidewalk as if in anticipation of its need._"

Health drink? _Health drink! _If you've heard of _health drinks, _you know the score. Lacerations from grimy monster-claws? Stab-wounds from creatures armed with rust-metal shanks attached to their malformed limbs? Broken bones? Smashed backs? Head wounds? No problem. Have yourself a health drink or two, and you'll be good as new and back in business. Health drinks, guaranteed to heal life-threatening injuries in less than zero-point zero-nine seconds—faster than any other competitor's product! Bottled and distributed by Thunderhorse Corporation, you can find health drinks at your local rip in the time-space continuum.

_Health drink _was all Heather needed to hear. _O-o-ooh yeah_. The girl lovesthese things. And if you were to come across tasty beverages that could instantly fix anything from Hell-bent headaches to bullet-hole blood-loss and more, you'd probably love them too. The girl gulped down the whole bottle of the dark liquid in a very unladylike fashion.

Too bad a bottle of drink is only your friend as long as it's full. What a friend it was, though. Her vision cleared up in an instant, her headache wasn't even a memory now, and the girl felt energized enough to run a few marathons. Got to her feet. "Hey, thanks!"

"I am not deserving of your appreciation," stated Intemelessy. "It was your ability which disabled the Mk-63 Adversary and allowed me to retrieve that item. Of additional note, we are consequently able to increase our mission success due to the acquisition of the Adversary as a combat resource."

Acquiring the Adversary as a…_what?_ "Woah, hey… Hold on," went Heather. "Did you just say that we're…_keeping _that big crazy thing?" Now her voice was getting up to an angry holler. "_Are you out of your computer-mind! That thing nearly blasted us both from here to Hell!_"

Over in the street, the Mk-63 Adversary took a few thick armored steps. Its voice was a baritone growl heard through the vibrating points in its armored plating used for speakers. "_Mark 63 Adversary online. Allies detected. Heather Mason. Intemelessy Sinomen._"

"And on top of that, you told that thing my name! Jeez!" went Heather, giving an angry _stomp _of her right foot. Then began to pace on those dollar-store sneakers of hers. "This is just plain loony. No way… No way is this gonna work." Then, as if talking to someone who just found a stray animal, "We can't keep it."

Responded the android-girl, "Negative. We must keep it. I have countermanded its root programming as so it is now our ally. This development is viable and necessary. The probability of additional threats being present is over sixty percent. If our enemy has placed one battlefield-grade enemy in place, he could have placed additional units at our destination."

Heather let out an angry huff, glancing up at the big mighty thing that was reprogrammed to be a good guy now. "You know what? Why couldn't that odd prisoner jerk be a normal kinda Silent-Hill jerk and throw a bunch of _normal _freaks at us? Yeah… How about some messed-up zombie nurse-things with some kind of skin covering their heads? Or some flying, _floating _meat-freaks that look like big blobs of cancer wrapped in bandages? Or hey, why not monster-dogs? Can't have a visit to Silent Hill without _monster-dogs_. Looking like they've been beaten with the ugly stick after they fetched it from the depths of Hell and stuff. Why'd that jerk have to _send some kind of war-machine _try and kick our asses? What is _wrong _with that guy?"

…

2.

…

That guy was busy doing what he came here to do. He did not want Jimmy present at this particular round of great works—lest Jimmy do something to alter the flow of the rituals even just a little. So, the odd prisoner got Jimmy out of the way for now by making him a lookout.

Being a lookout, Jimmy was…looking out, of course. Looking at the street right now. This lane used to be the main drag of Silent Hill's commercial downtown, all of those small storefront businesses where tourists would splurge a lot of cash at local restaurants, buy up local goods (including some _recreational substances _not found anywhere else, wink-wink), spending lots of money and what-not, even visit the in-town amusement park a half-dozen miles or so away. Well, the throngs of tourists and all the easy cash to grease the gears of commerce (to fatten the pockets of local politicians) are long-gone. Gone, as are the people who used to live here. Now there were lots of abandoned buildings and lots more fog on top of that. A dude or dude-ette couldn't see more than three car-lengths in this atmospheric pea-soup stuff.

Didn't keep Jimmy from trying to look around, though—standing on a street-corner. He could just as easily have stood anywhere else along the sidewalk to do his visual surveying. Then again, when somebody is said to be a lookout for a group up to no good, a street corner is the place to be. So go lessons in criminality. Looking this way, a quick look that way, Jimmy was not doing much else…other than doing a whole lot of worrying.

The odd prisoner told Jimmy to take in the sights but not to leave this downtown street. Those weren't the odd prisoner's _exact _words, though. He had to say it like somebody who stepped out from a Conan-the-Barbarian fantasy novel or something—like one of those sorcerers that the before-mentioned warrior usually ends up killing in some violent fashion. The odd prisoner's _exact _words included, _My witness, you are to meander along the lane. However, you are not to stray from it. Tarry, yet do not make yourself quarry for that which inhabits this town._

Jimmy understood most of what the odd prisoner said, understood more of what he said after thinking about it. _Tarry? Quarry? Meander? _Nobody talks like that in real life. Nobody but oddballs like the odd prisoner, that is.

So that's what Jimmy was doing now. What else was there to do, go bowling? This town isn't exactly the liveliest place on the map. It is _anti-_lively because this is where people come _to die._ Even if they don't know it, even if some manage to get away, most jokers who end up here don't leave here alive. It's a trap and they don't know it.

_Roach Motel, _thought Jimmy, an advertisement for roach box-traps coming to mind. _They check in. But they _don't _check out._

Roach Motel? Or was it Roach _Hotel_? Ah well, it's not like those nasty things are particularly picky about accommodations—not like cockroach gentlemen in tailored Armani suits (multiple sleeves for the extra limbs, of course) and cockroach ladies in Prada designer-wear go around following the recommendations of culture-vultures printed up in the New Yorker or the society columns.

Imagine how a hotel review would go for a Roach Motel (or Hotel). _These so-called Roach Hotels are three-star accommodations for those of the distinguishing insectile sort. We dock one star because the floors are absolutely sticky. Rumors abound of the structures being made by humans who wish to exterminate our kind. However, something in the ambiance draws those in the know like moths to flame. Far be it for us to comment on the state of moths, we nevertheless... _

Silent Hill is like a whole bunch of Human Motels set up in one place, making it one great big Human Motel then. Meaning, people _don't _check out.

Jimmy heard all the stories about how something big and crazy happened to make all the people disappear. There were lots of stories about some crazy top-secret science experiment gone wrong or how aliens came down one night and made everybody disappear. That's why there's all the fog, side-effects from what the mad scientists or aliens did to the place.

Big loud crazy stories, they were. Even louder still was the silence. No, it's not the silence of a town absent of stupid noisy meat-creatures on two legs going by the name _homo sapiens. _Noisy meat-creatures, walking around on two hinged meat-tubes, dressing up in shredded plant-fibers, melting some rocks dug out of the ground to make stuff and thinking themselves the lords of all creation, that's what humans are…

Anyway, it's not the silence from a lack of human-people that bothered Jimmy, a human-person himself. It's the silence of official talk about this town. Nobody in government or any mainstream source of news ever says _anything _about here. No serious newspaper people, no formal gray-haired men in suits on television being sober, and a whole bunch of _no comments _kind of talk from police or politicians when asked in public or in private. Every so often, around Halloween or something, some big talking-head anchor on a cable news network has somebody grinning while a reporter in the field (at cafes and such on highways near the town) asks around about _that _town. (Funny, the reporters _never _actually go into town.)

Nope, all the official people are saying a whole bunch of _nothing _about here. Even with a few drinks in them or even a whole blunt, the official people never…say…_anything_ about it. They even try not to joke about it.

And here Jimmy was. Never thought he'd be here. Hell, he never thought he'd see the outside of that state penitentiary. But here he is—seeing all the sights there were to see on this foggy street corner.

"Return to me, my witness," said the odd prisoner. "Much has been accomplished. Yet much more remains to be done and observed. Behold a product of the great works."

The young man quick-turned himself around, whipping his head this way and that to try and see the odd prisoner. It was like the odd prisoner was _right here_—standing next to him on one side or the other, standing behind him, standing _above _and somehow _below _him (even if there was just sidewalk concrete at his feet), talking to him.

But Jimmy didn't see _anybody._ It was like the fog was doing the talking for the odd prisoner from somewhere else. That's the odd prisoner alright, up to his old tricks. If the odd prisoner shared that skill with everybody else, imagine all the money that could be saved on cell-phone bills. It probably wouldn't sell too well if people found out that they had to wear one of those funky red robes for better effect, though. Oh yeah, the odd prisoner is a tricky one—real-life hocus-pocus and all that.

Jimmy knew where the odd prisoner was—exactly where he left him last. The odd prisoner was doing something in a small vacant lot next to a small building. That adjacent building was once used to handle the electricity on this street, the step-down transformers linked into the local distribution grid. Hmm, there was maybe something wrong with how they put all of that mighty electrical equipment in a building with _wooden _siding next to a vacant lot _all full of dry grass_. And all the local buildings had plenty more exterior wooden architecture to boot. All of that wood and grassy tinder being used in the vicinity of heavy-duty electrical equipment, and one just might as well _beg _for an electrical fire to wipe out the downtown area.

Ah well, it's not like Jimmy could go yell at the local town council or whatever to tell them about themselves. And it's not like there are a lot of heavy-duty users of electric power in town nowadays—unless the monsters or aliens or demons (or whatever those things are) have shacked up somewhere to use it.

Yeah sure, they probably use electricity too—playing a lot of video games on old-fashioned juice-guzzling analog TVs while lounging in hot tubs that keep _electric _boilers and water-pumps going, _all _the lights in _all _the rooms on at the same time. And some of the freaks are probably using big stupid volcano-hot hair dryers like the ones that your cousin likes to blast—probably single-handedly contributing like crazy to global warming just from the waste-heat alone. Then again, if they were demon-alien-things from alternate realities, chances are they might have some kinds of super-technology and wouldn't _need _local electricity. They probably had super-duper technology enough to make super-duper power supplies. Probably, they had batteries the size of ant toe-claws that could supply power for a million years.

_You can run a lot of hot tubs and video games in a million years, _thought Jimmy. _Probably earn a high score or two before the space patrol gets you or something._

There were no insects equipped with super-duper alien batteries in sight when Jimmy walked into the vacant abandoned lot next to the powerhouse. No video games playable from hot tubs were present, either. There were, however, other things wondrous and strange.


	20. Chapter 20

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome_

by Egglesplork

Chapter 20

…

1.

…

"Almost there," said Heather to Intemelessy--and not saying that to the twelve-foot fighting machine. _Mk-63 Adversary, _that's what it was—yet Heather didn't want to honor that big bad thing with a name, even if _Adversary _was actually a model designation instead of a moniker. It was hard for her to get over being blasted at by the huge thing, and Heather wasn't the forgiving type these days.

Heather talking out loud, by the way, that was a tactical error. Any soldier will tell you that talking out loud when stalking the enemy is the opposite of a good idea. Damn… That's one of the basics a soldier is taught _wa-a-ay _before earning his or her first stripe. Well, that's what gets learned even while a soldier-in-training is being told to do a few thousand push-ups or so for being stupid. (_Dumb as a private _is a saying that ought to be familiar to some folks heeding this tale. _Ate up _is another one.)

Guess what? Heather isn't a soldier. Never was, nuh-uh. Intemelessy might have a few future-centuries' worth of Army knowledge programmed into her, and the Mk-63 Adversary might be a twelve-foot war-machine on two legs, but Heather doesn't have a lick of military expertise. Never enlisted, never received a commission, never saw the sight of any barracks in her current life. However, the fact that Heather spoke out loud instead of speaking in a whisper, that tactical slip-up just might be excusable because the enemy's location was making a real ruckus anyway--a loud thrumming of high-powered machinery at work.

Louder than it ought to be, it seems. Maybe it was because fog carries sound really well. Or maybe it was because the odd prisoner didn't give a damn about who heard what he was doing. Maybe just go with all of the above. Whatever, it was too easy for Heather, Intemelessy and their giant pet robot to hear where they were supposed to go.

Now that they were closer, it sounded like…a mix between a jet-engine whine and the subtle screaming of a suffering little animal—probably an array of machines doing whatever it was they were doing, probably also causing some kind of pain. Though not quite loud enough to need hearing protection at this distance, it was loud enough.

Heather stopped walking along this sidewalk, the girl's other sense picking up what her eyes could not. The way ahead was obstructed with fog that was thicker than usual. The way ahead also had a slight glow to it, like the faint hints of a blood-colored sunset. Except this alleged sunset wasn't from the big friendly star in the sky--not a sun of this version of reality. Raising her hands to feel the mists of the fog, Heather able to _feel _that the glow was from...somewhere else.

Some major mojo was happening here. Apparently, the odd prisoner had ripped this reality a new one. A new cosmic orifice—as if this world needed any more. About orifices, some of them are good for putting out words or taking in food. (No, we're not talking about nostrils being used and misused for dietary intake--like how some kids learn to drink through their schnozzes.) At one end of the human body are orifices for food consumption and what-not. At the other end of the human digestive tract are orifices that, well… Nothing good ever comes out of a rear-end, does it?

Likewise, nothing good would likely come out of that hole ripped by the machinations of the odd prisoner. "We've gotta stop that," said Heather, suddenly running forward.

Now there's another tactical mistake worth all kinds of punitive articles imposed by one's platoon sergeant. Running full speed ahead without a proper awareness of the enemy's tactical setup, that's not too bright. All like, _cha-a-a-arge...!_

And running, they were--all three. Heather was all light and small with her dollar-store sneakers. Intemelessy kept pace at Heather's right. And the massive thing flanking Heather's left also kept up--even if it was shaking the street like a small earthquake. So here we go, this party of three going full-speed, like the charge of the Light Brigade, set to go against anything that might be waiting for them.

_Anything_ was right. Who's to say that they wouldn't run full-speed into something crazy? Crazy like, say…a tentacle-bearing horror the size of a pickup truck? Or hey, what about a whole pack of messed-up creatures that looked like they used to be dogs but were biologically distorted into something nastier by forces from beyond? (Can't beat this town for messed-up dog-creatures. It'd be a shame to leave without seeing some version of them at least once.) How about Heather's party of three run smack-dab into another _Adversary_-thing?

Funny those things should be mentioned… Funny like how that cab driver was able to know things, not the sort of _funny _that goes _ha-ha _and wins funny-money during a stand-up routine. Funny, because those were _exactly _the things that they encountered, the before-mentioned atrocities steeped in the fog and the glow from an array of strange machines set up in the vacant lot next to the powerhouse. That sideways red-toned glow made it all the more easier to see the bad guys in profile.

Standing dead-center in the middle of the street was something that was most likely cranked out by the future-world mega-factory which made the same _Adversary _on the good guys' side. (That is, unless you're rootin' for the odd prisoner and instead consider Heather's group to be the bad guys. Then we don't want to talk to you.) That other Mk-63 Adversary, it was also a twelve-foot armored fighting machine on two legs. It even had just about the same weapons set-up—mighty claw-hand on one side, a nuke-cannon on the other. Maybe the only difference would be a little something extra mounted on its right shoulder, but it was pretty much the same kind of thing. Meanwhile, it seemed not to mind the butt-ugly dog-things circling its legs. And one would have to say dog-things because no way in Hades could anyone in his or her right frame of mind ever say that those creatures were man's best friend—not anymore, if they ever were. They each had four legs attached to vaguely canine-shaped bodies, neck-like structures out front, but that was about it for comparisons to Fido_._ All over, the dog-things also had ropey stuff woven into their flesh—like exposed muscle tissue intermingled with...huge worms. The fancy-pants experts on Latin can probably help us out with this one… Yeah, call it _canis vermiform _or something like that. Whatever the fork those things were, they wouldn't win any prizes for beauty…unless somebody bribes the judges with enough sex and cash.

Meanwhile, off to a side was the truck-sized tentacle-creature--standing over by the arrangement of engine machines, the writhing tentacles outlined by the blood-colored glow coming from the center of the engines. The creature's central body was half-shell and lopsided, a set of eyes poking out the shell covering the right while the left side of itself was a massive knot of writhing and smooth tentacles—a mass of tentacles acting like legs while more of the things wriggled in the air.

The tentacle-thing wasn't growling, posturing or anything, so Heather just assumed the thing was just chillin' out. _Damned thing looks like a perv's fantasy, _went another thought in our girl's mind, thinking back to her days of working in a bookstore--once coming across a comic book with something like _that _on the cover. In particular, what concerned Heather was what creatures like that _does _with its tentacles. Menacing females of the human species, that's what. Except, the thing on the comic-book cover that Heather saw back then looked more like an octopus or squid instead of that biological _mess _over there.

Whatever. Wormy dog-things, a forked-up tentacle-creature, another Mk-63 Adversary fighting machine, it didn't matter what the odd prisoner left behind. Heather was going to wreck and destroy it all. The girl would see to it that _all _these things were killed-slaughtered-dead-destroyed.

A smattering of the wormy dog-things made a run for Heather's group—headed straight for the skinny blonde girl herself. Their huge tube-like heads jiggled obscenely as they came scampering in this direction on sets of meaty dog-like legs. And the gasping sounds coming from the creature's tube-heads sounded almost human. Sounding almost like…people doing the nasty. Sounds like they want to do something _nasty _to Heather.

Also coming in this direction was the aim of the other Adversary thing—the fighting machine on the other side of this fight. That other Adversary's arm-cannon was locked on and getting warmed up—a glow building within the seemingly cavernous depths of the weapon's bore. Meanwhile, Intemelessy was busy blasting worm-dogs to give commands to the Mk-63 fighting on the side of the good guys …

Or so it would seem. The Adversary on this side took some stomping steps forward--stepping on some of the dog-things in the process. No complaints about that. Armored machine- warriors meeting on a small battlefield, they squared off against each other.

The enemy Mk-63 Adversary turned its arm-cannon in this direction--only to have its aim knocked out of whack with a blast from this side's Adversary. That enemy fighting machine's shot missed by plenty. Even so, the passing heat of the blast made the local temperatures get to way up around a sudden summertime. But hey, better a hot breeze than a direct nuclear blast, that's for sure.

The enemy Adversary was mixing it up with the Adversary in Heather's party. Those worm-things were still distracting Intemelessy. Come to think of it, the wormy dog-things were coming in very organized little packs of three and six--using just enough of their numbers to be _just enough _of a distraction. Heather couldn't see how many dog-things there were, yet the girl knew there wasn't an unlimited number of them. A well managed number, they were… And Heather just knew--_just knew--_that a whole pack of those dog-things were just _waiting_ for her to go into that state of mind required for her to use her other abilities--not able to move or give orders. It takes a good long few seconds for Heather to do things like summon the unseen servants or call down that crimson lightning. In a fight, when things happen in pieces of seconds, that is too long.

Normally, keeping the jerks and freaks weakened or busy while Heather gathers mental energy enough to do her thing, that's how things are supposed to go usually. And there so happened to be that _other _Adversary-machine to distract this one. Does the word _setup _mean anything to you?

No? Okay, how about the word, _stalemate. _It's like chess or checkers, that's what's going on here. One side hams it up with a bunch of super-complicated moves so that the other side can't make headway. Maybe it's a legit stalemate where both sides are evenly matched. Sometimes, though, when it comes to warfare, the stalemate is a low-down dirty backhanded trick to keep you busy while they get ready to do something nastier. Or maybe they just want to wear you down.

_You creeps_, thought Heather—looking at how neatly and easily distracted her side was being. _Just couldn't play fair, could you. Sneaky, double-dealing…_

Then our girl's attention turned to the third factor on the enemy's side—the thing that stayed directly out of this fight all this time. It was the tentacle-thing, probably just _one thing _on its mind when it comes to females, its lopsided half-shell body with the cluster of eyes staring while its tentacles waved and wriggled through the air. Occasionally, it gave a _twitch_ with its ropey appendages. The set of eyes on the shelled side of its body glinted with some kind of fierce intelligence. It was not a human intelligence. Then again, intelligence--like speech--isn't exclusive to those creatures who invented the wheel for themselves and figure out how to use fire.

_So_ _that's the brains behind this wild rumpus, _thought the girl. Leading the other Adversary and the worm-dogs like somebody in charge singing the lyrics to the Hokey-Pokey. And to think the ugly thing was just relaxing and here to enjoy the scenery--what's visible regardless of the floating gray crap known as fog.

A tentacle twitched. A pack of worm-dogs ran forward. Another twitch, another set came... You _put _your worm-dogs in. You _put _your worm-dogs out. You _put _your worm-dogs in, and you _shake 'em _all about… You do the Hokey-Pokey and you _t-u-u-urn _yourself around. That's what it's _a-a-all _about.

_I'll show you what it's all about, crab-face, _thought Heather. "Intemelessy! Tentacle freak at ten o'clock. Light 'em up!"

Intemelessy's left eye turned to focus on the creature indicated while her right eye was still doing the aiming for her right arm. Her left eye doing the aiming, Intemelessy turned her left pistol to aim at the tentacle-creature. One big shot…

And that was all it took. Letting out _how-w-wls _of burbling words not pronounceable with human vocal apparatus, the tentacle creature collapsed in on itself. Instead of its tentacles doing the alternate-reality version of the Hokey-pokey, now it was doing the twitching boogie of oncoming death. The creature was as good as dead because some of the creature's important insides were vaporized with Intemelessy's sideward shot. Just taking a little while to totally die, is all.

It was enough time to talk some last-minute trash before biting the big one--directing the trash-talk at Heather. _You have defeated me, _communicated the tentacle-creature to our girl. (Don't ask how that thing knows how to speak English, because it wasn't speaking English. It was talking mind-to-mind to get the message across by bypassing language. Cheater. Years of memorizing seemngly nonsensical grammar and rules about languages ) _Had you been a mere human, I would have died in shame. And I am dying, leaving this life, you false-thing. You imposter, wearing a body which resembles that of a human… _

As the tentacle creature's mind faded, its body stopped twitching so much. Still was twitching a little, though. When folks and animals die in movies, they just slump over and go limp. That's not how things _really _happen. And unlike those censorship-sissified movies, books and storytellers will tell you all about what _really happens _sometimes--like how animals already dead will still _j-j-jerk _or a leg will give occasional _yoink_, the body not wanting to really be dead but being that way anyway.

While the tentacle-creature was doing the Hokey-Pokey of death, the rest of the action died off on its own. The remaining worm-dogs flop-dropped to the foggy street—the little ropey-tentacles interwoven with their muscle-tissue giving off dying wriggles before also going limp. As for the Adversary machine on the bad guys' side, it shut down. Its upper body bent over while both its motor-arms drooped—the arm-cannon making cracking and hissing noises as the energy within shut off while cooling. With no evil-mastermind tentacle creature to jerk their strings, those jerks weren't able to attack Heather's group anymore.

…

Walking over here, Heather gave a look to the creature's corpse before stepping over a few stray tentacles—walking around the half-shell central body. The girl didn't worry about one of those tentacles whipping up to do something nasty because the creature was _dead_. Heather could sense it. The creature's tentacles were no longer slimy, already stiff from drying up and looking a tad bit crumbly. In fact, the ever-so-slight foggy breeze was carrying away little dried flecks of the creature's ropey limbs. And the creature's central shell-body was also dried, also looking crumb-like. Not even twenty minutes from now, the creature's rapidly drying corpse would probably be scattered in a foggy breeze, like tossed ashes—its shell to be left a thinning pile of dust which would also vanish or be mistaken for sand if somebody came here. Remember, some things don't belong in this world.

That didn't matter to Heather. Not like the girl could give a darn about the freak's corpse. What did matter was a piece of paper stuck to the wooden slats of the powerhouse next to this vacant lot.

A white piece of paper, it looked to be neatly ripped from a spiral-bound notebook. Neatly, because paper taken from spiral-bound notebooks has those shreds along the torn edge where it was attached to the wire-binding. Not so with this piece of paper, the separated edge was straight and neat as if cut with one of those box-cutter knives.

The handwriting was as neat as the cut-edge. Neat, as if someone typed it up and printed out the letter on one of those word-processing programs. Except, once upon a time, there were no computers or typewriters. Once upon a time, people used to know how to write so precisely that you'd have thought they used a machine to write. This was like _that _kind of super-neat penmanship.

And the handwritten letter's penmanship was as prim and proper as the language—both sides on one sheet of paper. It was really small handwriting too. Heather read it.

_To The Female-Thing Which is Not Human,_

_By the time you will have read this, in part if not in entirety, I shall have absconded to a place beyond common reckoning. This is figuratively and literally true. The term _reckoning _itself is navigational—nautical contemplations of those seeking a destination by way of astrolabe, compass, clock or other such contrivances. Where I have gone is beyond any simplistic direction or distance measurable by such weak human instruments. Humans are weak of mind and are largely incapable of comprehending realities beyond their own. Hence, the utilized phrase _beyond common reckoning _becomes a double entendre. _

_Speaking of that which is double in nature, why do you wear the appearance of a human? Samael, Alessa, Heather, what is a name beyond it being a label? To paraphrase the economist of one world, the name _Heather _belongs to females of a low socio-class—those acerbically and euphemistically denoted as _trailer trash. _Do you aspire to be trailer trash in your current life, Heather?_ _Your appearance is surely not by choice. Personally speaking, I have had no choice in the matter of my own incarnation—shamed to speak of having been born to such a weak and flimsy race of creatures fashioned from apes. Given your abilities, you could quite easily change your form into something more proper and worthy of awe. You nevertheless choose to live a lie and an especially weak one at that. _

_I shall be awaiting your attempt at breaching the periphery of my new redoubt. Your weak attempt at seeking me out shall be a briefly welcome respite to the monotony and ease of progress in my great works. Else, I have the business of worlds to attend—and to destroy._

_Yours in Thought (Not in Sincerity),_

_--The Odd Prisoner _

…

2.

…

After having calmed down a bit, wanting to rip the letter to shreds but Intemelessy taking it for some computerized reason, Heather was relaxing. Walking all these miles had worn her out a little. Lithe and athletic as Heather may be, the girl was still on the petite side. And when someone is Heather's size, a mile to a person of average height can seem like a mile and a half to her.

This wasn't Heather being lazy or anything. Rather, this was her staying out of the way--cooling it by the wood-sided powerhouse, sitting on her jeans-covered butt and not doing much else because Intemelessy was doing everything. Intemelessy knew what to do and how to do it.

Meaning, the synthetic girl was over there among the circle of six strange machines set up by the odd prisoner—those engine-things that looked like they were ripped out the guts of starships, the _radiation _symbols on them face-up, wires trailing out the dark-metal blocky sides. Just one of those machines had juice enough to poke a hole in the fabric of time and space. Two of them was more than a little trouble. But that's _six _of them together in one place, arranged in a circle. It's like they were set up that way because…

_Stonehenge_, thought Heather. That's circular stone setup over in that other country. Arranged in a circular fashion, just like the strange machines. About Stonehenge, the official story was that a bunch of guys in robes somehow managed to lug some car-sized rocks for miles and set them upright in a circular way—did that centuries ago. Keep in mind, the Stonehenge construction crew did that _wa-a-ay _before fossil fuel-burning construction machinery was popular. It was also done an ocean away from people who were doing some serious shenanigans with ropes, pulleys and levers. Well, if some ancient dudes could build freakin' mountain-sized _pyramids _in the middle of a freakin' desert wasteland, then a freakin' circular arrangement of multi-ton rocks ought to be no sweat. Just ignore the fact that all the brainiacs in the universities can't agree on exactly _how _those ancient structures were built.

Dudes in robes, working ropes and levers, that's the _official _story. Unofficially, word has it that space aliens gave those Stonehenge dudes a hand or that they had powers enough to move rocks with their mind. Aliens and super mind-powers used to move rocks—just like how those self-centered maniac monarchs of the desert had big-ass stone-pyramids built just to honor themselves. People were more willing to believe in super-powers and aliens than they would those college profs, actually.

Heather was thinking along the unofficial lines because her reading habits tend to steer that way. Her literary meanderings usually take her through horror and mystery novels, but the occasional nonfiction book on the occult is a nice change of pace. Add to that how _this _foggy town of her origin gets featured in books like that—featured right alongside chapters on Roswell and Loch Ness.

Well, Heather wouldn't necessarily go along with the space-alien explanation for Stonehenge and what-not. Entities from an alternate reality helping set up Stonehenge was more believable to her, maybe. Yet the little gray space-dudes of legend might have their hands full doing things besides setting up stone-block circles or building-sized pyramids. Yeah, the grays are busy—using their UFOs to turn donuts in corn-fields, performing amateur surgery on livestock, running portable human-alien fertility clinics, stuff like that…

And Intemelessy was still doing her thing. The female android would kneel down, do some things to a control panel on the side of one strange machine, then just stay there for a little while. Then the synthetic girl would move on to another strange machine and do something similar. If this was one of those hokey sci-fi tales told by Hollywood, it would be as if Intemelessy was one of those random background technicians who seemingly pressing buttons just to look important. No deception here, Intemelessy really was doing something serious and systematic.

Exactly what kind of system or procedure Intemelessy was following, Heather didn't see the pattern. And on top of that, it wasn't like Intemelessy went to every one of the strange machine so far. Asked Heather aloud, "Hey, are you gonna be much longer?"

Intemelessy straightened her legs in standing, did not answer immediately. Not that Intemelessy was being rude, it was just that her computer-mind was too full of super-long calculations to answer immediately. It's like working on one of those thousand-dollar machines hooked up to the Internet or used to play monster-killing games, and the computer-works get so overwhelmed with kajillions of stuff to do that the machine can't do anything just yet--things like communicating with humans. Processing. Please wait…

"I am recalibrating the trans-warp inducers to bring us within as close approximation to the odd prisoner as possible," said Intemelessy after that while. "This must be done on axes spanning nine dimensions. Such is to be contrasted with the factors of four dimensions when operating within a space-time environment with which you are most familiar."

"Four dimensions? Like, don't you mean…?" Heather wanted to ask, _Don't you mean three? _Heather got her high-school equivalency diploma through home-schooling. Her learning was stronger in reading and writing instead of math and science. That's what happens when your dad's a writer instead of a physicist.

Nevertheless, Heather thought that there ought to be just _three _dimensions to deal with. You know. _Left and right_, that's one dimension. Now tack on _forward and back_, that's another dimension—two-dee. Three dimensions is when you have _left-right, forward-back, _and then _up-down_--that last one being a giveaway. You gameplaying folks who like to make computers super-busy (please wait…) ought to know what three-dee is, playing games where characters run all over the place and can be seen from all angles. Reality is just three dimensions, right? Three-dee?

Wrong. Don't forget the dimension of _time._ That alone is at least one more dimension everybody knows about. Everything is always moving through time—seeming to go even faster when you're doing something awesome or slower when you're waiting for a computer-minded android-girl to recalibrate some trans-whatsits on some space-machines.

Let's have an example of how time can be another dimension. Let's say somebody plops something in the front yard. And for example, let's make it one of those damned garden gnomes. You know, those foot-high elf-looking figurines that grandmas have, the ones holding up the little signs to _keep off the grass_? (Off the grass, eh? Are they telling you quit smoking pot? A bit hypocritical, since lots of grandmas smoked the stuff in their day, still do.) Then all the fantasy fanatics will tell you that there _is _a difference between elves and gnomes. One race is good with magic. The other is better at engineering and… Whatever.

Okay, you can see that the garden-gnome object exists at that point in three-dimensional space relative to the Earth's surface. The garden gnome has width (left and right), depth (forward and back) and height (up and down). Width, depth and height, that's three dimensions. Now here comes the dimension of time.

And here comes trouble, too. Let's say some stupid jerks passing through the neighborhood with more money than sense take it into their heads to _kidnap _(or gnome-nap) that foot-high figurine. Then they take it with them on their travels throughout the world—occasionally sending the neighborhood old lady photo-postcards with the before-mentioned outdoor garden atrocity, the gnome with various backgrounds. This thereby inspires a whole generation of low-budget travel commercials.

The thing is, once Gnomey the Garden Gnome goes bye-bye, it is _no longer on the front lawn. _It existed on the front lawn in the past. But in the present and into the foreseeable future, it is no longer there. (There was a _garden gnome_ here. It's gone now.) That's how three-dimensional objects can exist in a fourth-dimensional sense--the dimension of time.

Though Heather probably looks more like a garden _elf _instead of a garden gnome, and though Heather would prefer _not _to be told that to her face, the girl did not want to be here for too much longer. That's because the girl didn't want to be bothered by whatever else was waiting around in the fog to stir up some trouble.

With all the fog swirling around and just the wind between sounds of Intemelessy clicking buttons on those strange machines, Heather could've _sworn _that some _other _sounds weren't too far away. On top of that, her other sense was telling her that _something _was maybe in the neighborhood. (By the way, _how long _is it supposed to take for a synthetic-girl to reprogram a metaphysical portal in nine dimensions?)

You know what? Why was Heather worrying in the first place? Right now, there were _two _massive Mk-63 Adversary machines standing guard at this location. Hey, Crab-Face was gone with the wind and wasn't around to control that other Adversary anymore. So Heather let Intemelessy set up that extra fighting machine to be on their side too. And on top of that, Intemelessy could stop her work in a jiffy and take out a whole town-block if trouble decided to make itself known. Then there are Heather's abilities.

Not to worry, then. Two robot-machines standing guard with nuclear cannons. A synthetic girl able to do more fighting along with that. And Heather still has her kick-ass. Still… You know how this town can be.

Before Heather could stand up to her full less-than-five-feet of height and shout like somebody exhibiting symptoms of a full-blown stereotypical Napoleon complex (_Will you hurry up already!_), Intemelessy was done. "Preparations are complete. We are within a ninety-nine percent probability of reaching the approximate location of the odd prisoner beyond this time-space continuum. Due to a lack of data regarding this technology, I was unable to calibrate coordinates for transferring either Mk-63 Adversary. Such difficulties are further compounded by how each Mk-63 Adversary has energy systems containing. The peripheral radioactivity alters the dimensional-path declensions in ways too subject to flux."

_And I maybe understood maybe the first two things you said, _thought Heather, trying not to do a happy-dance from hearing that they wouldn't be taking a big-huge robot with them on this next jaunt. "Sorry big guys! Maybe next time!" was her shout to the military machines standing on the street. Said to Intemelessy, "Okay, let's rock."

Standing with feet together, Inetemelessy made a straight-handed gesture to a spot on the dry grass of the vacant lot—a spot that was just off-center within the circular arrangement of machines. "You are to stand here. It is recommended that you not move from that position during the trans-warp induction."

Heather went over to stand where Intemelessy's right hand was angled toward the ground. "Woah, hey…! Are you for real?" That was Heather complaining as Intemelessy knelt down to guide Heather's feet to a more exact spot. "Geez! You could've _tripped _me!"

And there's another advantage to being short like cute little Heather-girl. If Heather _were _to tip over, there's wouldn't be too much distance to fall. Of course, Intemelessy didn't say that because the lab-people didn't have time to program in her a sense of humor--least not an intentional one. So that little (heh) jibe about Heather is just between us folks, and Heather need not hear it. Besides, short-stuff here probably wouldn't get the joke just yet because it takes time for words to drift down to her.

Intemelessy went over to the one machine not touched by her so far to press a particularly thick-red plastic button. In the seconds before a humming machine-sound filled the foggy air, Intemelessy had already quickly walked over to stand next to Heather. A series of sunset-colored blurs streaked across the space of air where the two girls stood—both the real girl and the synthetic one. Heather remembered seeing those sunset-colored blurs before but didn't tell Intemelessy. No, Heather was too busy being faded out of this reality to do much talking.

…

When the sunset-colored blurs were gone, so were Heather and Intemelessy. Some eddies of fog whirled to fill their space, the dry grass reasserting itself. Somebody really smart in biology would look down to see that the stuff really wasn't _grass _but actually another form of life somewhat like fungi. Ah well. It's close enough.

Meanwhile, this fog drifted through the vacant lot next to the powerhouse, drifting along the street, somewhat obscuring the shape of the Mk-63 Adversary machines which had been reprogrammed to stand guard. There they stood, looking like dark metal war-statues in fog. Except these things aren't just standing around for decoration. These two are for real.

About what Heather sensed a while before skipping town, what the girl felt was in the neighborhood… The creatures had mostly dispersed. As with all sorts of creatures that showed up in Silent Hill, they would have been some truly monstrous and monstrously awesome sights to see for those into that sort of thing. Most of the creatures left, that is. One of them was still hanging around.

"_Oh-h, hoh-h-h-h…_" came the sound of something, more sigh than voice. What little vocalization there was in it, it was a man's voice, the voice of someone _big _and _fat _and wearing a well-tailored suit. The jacket part of the outfit wasn't so well-tailored anymore since there was a nasty and jagged hole in the back _where a parasitic creature was attached to the wearer's back_.

You'll get three guesses as to what this pathetic shambling figure was, but you're wrong if you guess anything other than the warden. See, the odd prisoner left the fat man behind. The odd prisoner took Jimmy with him much as how megalomaniacs throughout history have dragged around scribes to behold great deeds. (Rich and powerful humans can't feel truly rich and powerful if there aren't people around to see how rich and powerful they are.) That leaves the warden, the warden being left because he's just plain useless at this point. That is, unless you can find a use for a zombified idiot that ambles around with a big body-controlling parasite on the back.

Like a retirement home opening the gates to let some helpless geezers with wandering minds wander the streets, the warden was free to amble-shamble and stagger-walk his way along the fog-ridden streets of this abandoned town. Because of radical changes to his body's biochemistry caused by the parasite, the warden wasn't exactly alive anymore. He didn't need to eat or drink. That's little comfort when his body was almost totally taken over by something nasty and evil, riding him like a portly mount. Meanwhile, the parasite itself leeched nutrients from beyond this reality and didn't need to sample the local goods to stay alive.

As it has been noted before, the warden's mind was still in his body—more or less. (Probably less since over a decade of nose-candy screwed up his righyt from gworhg The parasite attached to the warden's back was keeping the warden's brain jazzed up on chemicals to make the hurt feel good_._ At least other monsters left him alone, seeing as how having a creature physiologically and biochemically bonded to his body made the big fat warden a monster himself. Being taken over by the parasite is as good as wearing the right colors in Crips territory. Let 'em alone, homeys. He's cool.

Not cool, the warden was being steered by the parasite to one particular place in this neighborhood. That so happened to be a place in the vicinity of a certain downtown powerhouse with wood siding, a certain vacant lot with dry grass, and two huge other-worldly military robots with last-standing programmed order to be on guard.

Not that the Mk-63 Adversary machines were soldiers in the human sense, but they _were _from some kind of Army--somewhere, some other time, some other world. And every soldier from the United States Army knows something like one of the first general orders learned in Basic Training. It goes, _I will guard everything within the limits of my post and quit my post only when properly relieved._ These two Adversary machines were not relieved yet, and they _will _the limits of this post.

Just look at that, something was coming within the limits of this post just now—something shaped like a fat-ass drug-addict warden with a fat-ass parasite attached to the back. The old saying about the thin line between _bravery _and _stupidity _really works here because the warden was full of _stupidity _while the controlling parasite was being _brave._ Or maybe the thing riding the warden's back was being stupid enough for both parasite-and-host combined. Remember, most monsters are dumb.

The chances of the parasite-and-warden team beating a Mk-63 Adversary are about a snowball's chance in Hell. Now, make that the chances of a snowball lovingly dipped in napalm before being FedEx-delivered to Satan's place of business…in summer. And by the way, it's _always _summer in Hell. With the warden being the big-bellied fat-ass he is, he is a particularly large stand-in for a 'palmed snowball--which is appropriate because he's going to be wrappped up . He is also a very big target, trying to speak to the ea

It was way more than eighteen seconds since either Mk-63 Adversary had fired an arm-cannon. And with the fat-ass warden moving about as fast as you'd expect a fat-ass to move, there was too much time to get their nuclear works fired up. Target lock…

A too intense blast of white-hot plasma met with the blasting report of the discharge, and then it was over. Where the warden-and-parasite team once stood was now a glowing crater in the street, a crater maybe about the size of a car, with maybe some faintly discolored wisps of smoke above it. As for the now-cooling crater, it's not like there weren't already enough holes in this town.

_Target destroyed, _went the computer-mind of the Mk-63 Adversary that fired the blast. It detected faint traces of organic vapor, yet it was not worth warming up the arm-cannon to try and eliminate that. Designed to withstand artillery-caliber plasma bursts and attacks from nuclear ordnance, a little whiff of smoke wasn't worth engaging. In other words, what was left of the warden didn't even amount to a fart in the breeze. He was _gone._ So for all those wondering what happened to the warden, there's your answer. Screw the warden, because his role in the tale is as done as he is—no need to keep his secretary-screwing, drug-addicted, fat-ass self around anymore.

…

3.

…

Now we're coming up on the place of the final showdown. But before we get there, it's time for some forewarnings first. If people will cheer or jeer about what happens next, that depends on which side they're rooting for in this tale. Some people like rootin' for the bad guy—as a certain rock-song goes. Those are the sort of people who _like _seeing dark-clad villains win out over the goody little two-shoes protagonists. They would _like _to see the end of the prim-and-prissy hero with his fancy outfit, his styled hair and that damned hokey grin--like to see his candy-ass handed to him in the final battle against the darkly powerful dude who wears all black and talks with a foreign accent. That's what happens in all the action movies, right?

Movies, we're talking. Forget television, because all that happens is that the same bad guys always get away. That way, the same good guys can keep trashing the same bad guys every week—just like how that bald-headed kid in the comic-strip keeps trying to kick the football before the girl snatches it away, getting away. As for you video-game kids, if the bad guys win or not depends on how good you are at wriggling that controller around--and if you're sober.

Now for those who tend to take your stories from writing on rectangular pieces of dried wood-pulp or pick up storyteller-delivered tales through the two fleshy jug-handles attached to the sides of your noggins, you know that the so-called bad guys _can _win sometimes. There's no roomful of inbred Hollywood executives telling writers and storytellers how the story is supposed to go, no pile of people with more money than sense telling a writer to put _this _actor in _this role _with _this _number of changes to the script. Hells no. The storyteller has to tell the story how it happens, not the way some coke-heads in thousand-dollar business clothes want it to turn out. What happens, happens. That's just how the story goes.

Some things to consider. Heather is not necessarily a good girl. The ability to summon some unholy forces from another place which might or might not be something like Hell, that's not exactly a trademark move for someone on the side of angels…if you believe in angels, if you call them that. Okay, so demons are _fallen _angels. Whatever. Still to consider is how Heather's abilities are in the same category of what the monsters do, something like what the odd prisoner can do with arcane gestures learned from lots of weird writing.

And Intemelessy, that dude-ette is a straight-up killing machine. Never mind if Intemelessy is drop-dead sexy in that Goth-black gymnast-commando outfit of hers. Beneath the synthetic skin and artificial flesh, Intemelessy is still a killer robot inside. Everybody knows that there's only supposed to be one kind of killer robot—the _evil _kind.

On the flip-side, don't go saying that the odd prisoner is all bad either. Give the guy a break, okay? He did a world a favor by making the warden get his due. If not for the odd prisoner, then the warden would just keep doing _what _he wants, _when _he wants, to _whoever_ he wants, damn it. That's the way it is these days--your world run by wealthy, drug-snorting, manipulative fat-asses from important families. Admittedly true is how it's that way for a lot of worlds--though not all worlds have dudes like the odd prisoner to change up the game.

And then, maybe the odd prisoner's actions led to the deaths of a few hundred… Okay-okay, it was a few _thousand _prison inmates killed by the odd prisoner's actions—most of whom were guilty of crimes, some not. Some prison guards died in the fracas too.

Don't forget how Heather's sometimes-nosy neighbors were killed by the odd prisoner's antics too. They weren't convicted hard-core felons. Not most of them, at least. Yet they were killed by the odd prisoner.

Yet Heather doesn't want to fool around with alternate realities, flood them with monsters and what-not. Heather doesn't want to do any of that, period. The odd prisoner does. The old saying goes that you can't make an omelet without breaking a few dead-chicken embryos. He's doing it for a good cause--the breakdown of reality as so it can be started up again. He's picking up where somebody else left off, that's all. Some folks did before what the odd prisoner was doing now.

Again, this is being said as so people don't have heart attacks and get pissed--feeling pissed on--when what happens next, happens. Maybe they'll stand up and start shouting at the hypothetical movie screen, throwing ten-dollar cups of overpriced soda or twenty-dollar buckets of popcorn. Or perhaps they'll start yelling at the words slowly unfolding on the typewritten pages. If this was a video game, they'd get ready to throw the game remote-controller across the room—hopefully not hitting a roommate or a pet. This is just a heads up to the disappointment because _some _people somewhere are bound to get nasty regarding what happens next. It's just how the story goes. Thank you for your time. Now let's get this road back on the show—the road and show of outcomes and fates.

…

After the transition into this next world, Heather got to her feet in a hurry. Having been jazzed up from walking the foggy streets of her place of birth, the girl wasn't going to lie down on the job anytime soon. (Lying down on the job. Heh, doing that sort of thing is for politicians and prostitutes.) On her feet and ready for action, the girl took in sight of her immediate indoor surroundings.

What usually happens is that Heather ends up in some other world where the scenery is butt-ugly. The girl has already seen her share of rust-metal post-apocalyptic scenery, messed up creatures ambling around the wastes of fallen worlds. There were some times when trips to other worlds made for her seeing places that were not as fallen, yet still fallen nevertheless. Goodness no. That didn't happen this time.

This place was…_luxury._ An absolutely gleaming-clean marble floor was the walking surface of this grand hall--one of those kinds of floors done in black-white checker patterns. _Grand hall _is right. If they would have brought the Mk-63 Adversary machines here with them, if they would have brought a whole _platoon _of Mk-63 Adversary machines, three squads of those huge things could walk side by side in this wide hall and still have room for jell-o. Big hall, shiny hall, sunset-colored light slanted down from gigantic crystal-glass windows high up on the right side, windows that would probably need servants or robots on ladders to clean. That is, unless some kind of magic or technology kept those windows spotlessly clean. Sunset-toned light through the windows supplemented the light from massive gleaming crystal chandeliers that were _wa-a-a-y _up high near the ceiling of this hall. Nothing says opulence like chandeliers, especially ones made out of real diamonds set in platinum-alloy fixtures.

Heather was not a girl who was easily impressed by anybody or anything, but this… _This _place takes the prize. Hell, it takes the prize, wins the championship and marries the judges' daughters, too. This place was looking like something from a million fantasy and sci-fi novels that the girl had ever read in her multiple lifetimes, a place that could have been from _all _the stories. Heather stopped herself from reaching up to see if the top-tips of her ears had become pointy—this place more befitting elves and giants instead of a girl in blue jeans and a tank top. (Don't forget her dollar-store footwear, y'all.)

And if this place didn't fit Heather, it sure as shine didn't fit a synthetic-bodied android-girl. It especially didn't fit one in a gymnast-commando outfit with a set of hip-holstered nuclear-powered pistols, a glowing energy blade strapped to the small of a slender back. Fantasy and sci-fi thrown in the same pot, is that what this is? It is what it is, and that's what it is.

"We have reached the redoubt of the odd prisoner," said Intemelessy, standing with hands close to hip-holstered nuke-pistols. "Within nineteen meters, we shall find a set of double doors which shall give full and proper access to his chamber. This is stated with data regarding the likely design of this tower."

"Tower? I thought this was a freakin' fairy-tale castle," said Heather. A sideward nod to the marble-block wall on the right. "Could you gimme a boost? I wanna see something about what you just said0."

Intemelessy briefly considered disagreeing. This close to the end of the mission, the synthetic girl's computer-mind calculated the probabilities of something going wrong if deviating from a straight-forward path to the enemy from this point. Yet Heather had important whims sometimes. There must be an important reason for her to see…something.

So Intemelessy knelt down and allowed Heather to stand on her shoulders--using Intemelessy as a girl-shaped pedestal. Intemelessy slowly stood, standing on tip-toes (which wouldn't be easy for a human to do while wearing bootlets) as Heather reached up for the outcropping of the cut-marble windowsill.

There is a lot of strength in that skinny body of Heather's. And since the girl didn't weigh much, it was too easy for her to pull herself up to the huge windowsill. There our girl sat, looking down through the eerily super-clear window-glass--which might not be glass but some other kind of material. _Waddaya know, this really is a tower, _went a thought_.. _

From the view, Heather saw that this tower was mountainous in height and overall size. There was just enough curve to the huge-wide surface below to see that this place would look cylindrical if seen from far away. They were so high up that drifts of clouds were halfway _below_—a countryside spread out even farther beneath the clouds.

Heather looked up, seeing a sky steeped in the colors of a dying day, making the massive beam of energy in the uppermost reaches of the sky all the more visible. Not that Heather knew anything about this place, yet that other sense of hers told her that the beam of energy up in the sky connected to this mountainous tower was a beam that actually started somewhere else.

And for some dark and terrible reason that Heather herself did not understand, part of her wanted that beam _broken. _It was a sudden urge so strong that Heather's body tensed, her hands and eyes clenched. That _other _part of her wanted that done—the part of her that could summon the unseen servants from where they were in another universe.

The girl gave a shake of her head and fought down the urge. That dark urge went away, but while it was here…. "What's _wrong _with me?" asked Heather aloud. Intemelessy was staring. "Look out. I'm getting down."

When Intemelessy got out of the way, Heather hung down from the huge windowsill first by elbows, then by her fingers, then let herself drop down to the floor before the hoard of shouts came to fill this peacefully quiet hall with noise and chaos. A crowd of them, _two _crowds of them, they were coming from both ends of this massive hall.

Now _those _are some dudes who looked as if they actually belonged here. They were dressed in haberdashery that looked to be fashionable aroud the time around that of the Norman conquests over England. (If you don't know when that was, think Shakespeare and subtract a few hundred years.) And they had on shoes with toes that curled. As far-out as their old-fashioned clothes were, their weapons were anything but far-past. They were all armed with bright weapons that started with gleaming metal handles but had bright-red shafts of energy spouting out, saber-like--weapons glowing with some kind of strange force. So there you go--guys dressed in clothes like out of the 1100s yet armed with weapons that look like they won't be invented for another thousand years yet in some worlds. Oh, and they had green skin, mouths with fangs poking up from huge under-bites.

Some people might recognize those guys with curly-toe shoes to be another kind of creature, but they're still morons. Ever hear the saying, _bring a knife to a gun fight? _Nobody told those morons that _somebody _was going to bring projectile weaponry to this-here hoe-down. And anybody who's ever studied Japanese or European history will tell you that the outcome was pretty much a given. If not understanding that analogy, maybe some of you saw that scene of that movie when the tired guy with the pistol shoots the fancy-pants swordsman.

Intemelessy turned herself sideways—her pistols aiming in two directions, aimed at both the crowds. There was a moment with her taking a quick look this way, then that. Then the synthetic girl just started blasting.

Just like that, dozens of those dudes just started dying, their bodies piling up to make things difficult for those with them, their dark inhuman blood making the pretty and shiny floor slick and slippery for the rest of those energy sword-swinging stupid-heads. Look at that. Tracking curly toe bloody shoeprints all over this beautiful floor.

Even with Intemelessy's advantage of having nuclear-powered pistols of unlimited ammunition and blasts capable of taking down armored vehicles, the opposition had some kind of advantage in sheer numbers. Intemelessy just kept blasting, and the dudes just kept coming. Probably somewhere in the depths of this mountain-sized tower or all throughout that big-huge countryside, there were whole villages of green-skinned couples that have little else better to do than pop out babies who grew up to fight battles. Or maybe within the depths of this mountain-sized tower were some strange machines that tapped into whatever other-world that those dudes came from and rallied them up from there. Heck, maybe some machines _were _the mommas—cloning machines made with the same level of technology that could make towers big as mountains and blaze massive celestial beams of energy through the sky, the light show to beat all light-shows. Cloning machines, dimensional portals, mountain-villages, take your pick for an explanation as to how the fork there were so damned many dudes here to act like nuclear-pistol cannon-fodder. Didn't matter what the truth was about where they came from. They were here, and they were still coming.

Heather felt it a bit harder to reach into her abilities. It was hard because of something to do with that beam of energy in the sky of this world. Difficult is not impossible, and our girl was still able to do her thing. Heather's thoughts took…_on red edges, summoning her power_.

Talk about ride the lightning. It's red lightning in this case. Streaks and jags of florescent-red lightning ripped through first one crowd of green dudes to wipe them out. Then more streaks and jags of crimson electric did the same for the other. Hot damn, it was like a green-dude curly-toe-shoes barbecue. They were all screaming and yelling while they were cooked by the cartloads. Since there were so many of them, it took a while. Only a little while, relatively speaking. That crimson lightning—somehow _indoor _lightning—reduced the charging ranks of the freaks to heaps of fried goods.

"Yeah! Eat _that_, jerk-faces!" yelled Heather to the masses of charred corpses, their glowy energy-sword thingies no longer glowing. "Is that all you've got? Just like men, only good for a few minutes before the fun is done. Done before it's even started! Now you know why some of us don't like boys!"

The slaughtered jerk-faces had nothing to say in response. Their dozens and dozens more of corpses lie there, lots of them actually burnt and stuck together in lumps. Somewhere hidden in the recesses of the ceiling, a ventilation system came on to make sure that the rising smoke from the burnt bodies didn't fill the air of the hall. Heather didn't hear fans, yet indoor moving air still makes noise of some kind—the steady sucking hiss doing the job. That's super-tower technology for you, working in all kinds of geniusly convenient ways.

"_Come to hold audience with us,_" came an amplified voice throughout this hall. "_It would be unsporting of me to allow you destruction of my redoubt without a direct confrontation._"

Then, though the hidden high-tech ventilation works made little in the way of noise themselves, the huge doors at the central part of this grand hall made a grand set of noises. The people who built this place _wanted _you to know when those inner-sanctum doors opened. Heavy _th-thunks _sounded out as locking mechanisms disengaged. Massive squeaking and groaning sounded out as the hangar-sized wooden-looking doors opened inward.

Heather didn't recognize the voice but knew who it just had to belong to. We know that voice right off the bat. It could only be one jack-hole of all the jack-holes--the odd prisoner. He _wanted _to face Heather and Intemelessy.

…

If the hall was big and wide, then a throne room of this mountain-sized tower was not going to be outdone--not outclassed in scale or style. Throne _room? _Hell, make that _throne auditorium. _This place was maybe sizable enough to hold a small concert, yet even that is pretty sizable. The big-wide floor was more of that black-and-white checkered marble--except with straight bands of platinum forming the grid work between the squares. It made Heather think of a giant chessboard. That sort of comparison was probably appropriate because, from way up here in the tower stretching beyond the clouds, the land below was probably once ruled by idiots who thought of this world as being their game. And from the looks of the décor, the rulers of this world must have been some very rich idiots at that. The grand marble walls left and right had jewel-encrusted red-metal statues of people in some weird clothes that must have been all the rage when they were in charge.

We haven't even gotten to the centerpiece of this setup, either. The real star of the show was where the seat of power was positioned. There's no sense in having a throne room without a _throne _in place_. _

Heather's eyes followed the long blood-colored carpet which extended along this checkered-marble floor and over to the far end of this huge place. A pretty far ways away and on a circular raised platform festooned with velvet-looking carpeting was a throne. To the right of the throne was a naked corpse tied to a giant metal wheel--lashed with metal cables. Aw, don't go saying it's porn because the body is naked. That's because not only was the body bereft of clothes, it was also stripped of its skin. Genitalia too. Its exposed dried muscle resembling human beef-jerky, the lidless eyes staring with the blankness of death. And don't go crying for him because he's beyond the cares of this life--beyond tears of anyone who ever knew him.

Yup. That's Jimmy. He's a goner, folks. The odd prisoner didn't need the warden anymore and left him to wander. When the odd prisoner took on the idea that Jimmy wasn't in on the great works to be done, that's what happened. The odd prisoner became too frustrated with not being able to peek into Jimmy's mind, so he skinned Jimmy's body instead. That's perfectly alright, because Jimmy had already served his role in the story--having left that letter.

Flanking the throne itself were the two creatures probably responsible for skinning our guy Jimmy. The creatures were bare-chested man-things standing seven feet tall, rust-metal claw-hands attached to living arms, their heads bound in metal helmets nailed to shoulders and with wires connecting to places insides of their chests. Given how those chests did not flex in breath, how they also had wires reaching inside, just maybe they were as much metal machinery as they were living flesh.

Speaking of machines, Intemelessy gave introduction to the joker who needs no introduction to those heeding this-here story. Said the synthetic girl, "We have come to the inner sanctum of the odd prisoner. The entity located upon the throne must be terminated."

"_You, _Heather. You are a bastardized creature that wears the body of a human female," said the odd prisoner, ignoring Intemelessy's deadly threat. "Your intrusion here is not unexpected. That does not mean, however, your presence is at all welcome. You may have led my forces on a merry chase and have thus far turned them aside with ease, yet that ends now." He made a throwing gesture with his right hand, a billowing blood-colored sleeve of his robe flapping...

Remember the insta-kill magic that Jimmy feared so much in life? The kind of magic that could kill dudes with a mere gesture from the odd prisoner? Well, this was it. The odd prisoner's gesture was to make a shaft of metal appear out of another dimension and punch through Heather's body.

Which didn't happen. Not the punching through Heather's body part, at least. The metal shaft appeared, but it didn't hurt the girl. Heather's response to the odd prisoner's gesture was to put up both hands. It wasn't her physical hands and arms that blocked the blow. The _other _aspect of Heather blocked the attack six feet from the girl's physical body--a sound like a _thunk _against some kind of hard-limbed surface--maybe blocked by invisible claws. The rust-metal shaft bounced off that unseen part of Heather to thunk onto the carpet.

Intemelessy did what was pretty much expected. Those nuclear-powered pistols of hers came up, powered up and let loose with a blazing barrage of shots. No more trash-talk, the synthetic girl was all business and wanted that bald dude dead.

If it wasn't easy for the odd prisoner to kill Heather, then it wasn't going to be easy for Intemelessy to blast the odd prisoner--who sat back calmly on his throne while all kinds of nuclear-powered death was blazing in his direction. He sighed--the sigh carried across the huge throne room by that awesome personal magic-powered sound system of his.

A see-through layer of _something _slightly shimmering in the air in front of the throne--the air glowing a little as Intemelessy's blasts kept coming. The people who made this tower had all kinds of tricks too. Some might think that the makers of this place went to your world, saw a few episodes of that show with the space-ships and the guys in uniforms that look like pajamas and stole the idea. Or maybe it's the other way around--that the makers of that show somehow got a mental glimpse into this place and saw that technology at work. A…_force field?_ Whatever it was, it was something good enough to stop Intemelessy's shots, that's what it was. Intemelessy stopped firing, seeing how ineffective her attacks were.

Said the odd prisoner, "As you can quite evidently see, I am quite well-protected. The former ruling families of this world took certain technological precautions against various assassination attempts even within the depths of _sanctum sanctorum._ The occasional fist-sized nuclear device or other such high-yield means of death, such things were once utilized by assassins against the lords and ladies. Yet such measures were soon countermanded. You are protected by that which is unseen…as am I. We have quite an impasse." A small smile. "Or not." He made another throwing gesture.

Heather flinched and gasped, both her hands going up again. When that other aspect of Heather blocked this latest attack, it ended with another metal shaft bouncing off--hitting the carpet. This time the tip of the shaft was melted and glowing yellow-hot.

An angry deep snarling sound came from slightly above Heather--a sound like nothing on Earth. And for all our sakes, let's hope we never personally hear it up close in our world. _Go ahead. Try that again, _thought Heather_. _

The odd prisoner gave an angry look to the still glowing tip of the shaft. That color, the metal tip of the thrown shaft, it gave off a sun-colored glow. That color. _That glow. _For once, the odd prisoner lost his cool. He didn't fly off the handle and start a complete out-loud bitch-fit, but the look on his face and the sound of his voice meant that he was _quite _pissed_._

"How _dare _you. You unnatural creature, bastardized half-breed bitch of an existence between dimensions, I shall _not _have you besmirch my efforts with your _unnatural _presence!" The odd prisoner raised his left fist to slam down on one of the platinum-metal throne's armrest--no doubt intending to activate whatever crazy execution devices there were built into this place.

Remember what we learned about _trying _versus _succeeding? _Those short mutant-bastards from another world _tried _to use machines in killing Heather. Some big-headed thing also tried to do the same--way near the beginning of this tale's telling. Before that, whole bunches and masses and waves of freaks have _tried _ending Heather's current life. And don't forget how the odd prisoner--now more a prisoner of power and delusion instead of being imprisoned in a physical penitentiary--had _tried _to succeed.

That is to say, in trying, his left fist was poised to come down on the armrest…but it didn't make it down. At least, not coming down while still attached to the rest of the odd prisoner's body which--by the way--was being _ripped apart _and _eaten alive. _His left fist was coming down alright--coming down an unseen thing's gullet.

The left fist was ripped off, left arm along with it, the limb disappearing as something _unseen_ crunched and gobbled the thing. Human folks are usually born with two arms, the left one of the odd prisoner being ripped off. But don't go thinking the odd prisoner had a chance to use that other one of his because that arm was ripped off too--crunch, gobble, going, going…_gone._

Both his arms gobbled up, the odd prisoner sat up from the platinum throne. He didn't say anything in words. No, it was just this kind of wordless, inarticulate _yelling_--all vowels and no constantans. One big open vowel that went on as long as he could push air out through his lungs. Screaming, he wasn't dead…yet.

In all the scary books and movies, when some dude's limbs get detached, it's all like there's blood spurting everywhere. That's not what happened here. Nah, what really happened here was that there were some little driblets as the constricted blood vessels of his shoulder-stumps kept his red wet-stuff inside for now. Anybody who's ever been to war or working in an unsafe factory, anyone who has actually seen a limb or two get snatched or blown off will tell you that there's not a lot of blood at first. Some kind of evolutionary thing, the biology people will tell you--human bodies adapted as so an attack by predators on the long-lost grassy plains which humanity got its start. Human bodies are adapted as so sudden dismemberment doesn't make blood go everywhere at once--giving somebody just long enough to have the limb-stump dealt with--tied off or burnt shut (what they called _cauterizing_). So for blood to start spurting higgledy-piggledy from limb-stumps like strawberry soda-pop from fountain-jets takes a little while to happen, plenty of time for the odd prisoner to keep yelling his damn fool head off.

Before it was bitten off. His body was all standing there with no arms to help keep balance. Now it was standing there with no bald head to give it instructions. No use in having a body without a head, is there? Not to worry, the rest of the odd prisoner's body was being gobbled up quite efficiently--red robe, bare feet and all.

Heather is not a nice person. While this was going on, our girl stood there with one leg out, her slender arms crossed. Smiling. Thinking, _Hey dude, what's eating _you _all of a sudden?_

Just like that, the odd prisoner was…_gone. _When the unseen servants were done with that bald-headed asshole in the red robe, there was neither hide nor hair left of him. (There wasn't much hair left anyway because the dude shaved his noggin along with other parts of his anatomy. Don't ask.) He came here whole and left not-whole--not even swallowed whole.

…

Not only did an unknown number of unseen servants go to work in the throne room, they were also getting the job done on other levels of this tower. Given how this place was taller than a mountain, it was a lot of work to be done too. Not a problem, the unseen servants come from a world apart--a whole world of unseen servants available to do Heather's bidding. The unseen servants are legion.

In the machine-room depths of this mountain-sized tower, massive underground rooms full of energy-generating machines had been taken over by those in allegiance to the odd prisoner. This included lots of those clever little midget-creatures--the little dudes in coveralls, the ones that had proven themselves good at working strange machines, the ones that kept giving Heather trouble. All sorts of other freaks were getting things done too. Most of them looked as if they had some humanity in their ancestry--just maybe with some extra features added. Maybe some extra limbs added, some limbs missing, maybe some fur or scales. Some of the creatures looked as if they were never anything close to human. Whatever they were, wherever they came from, they were all in obeisance to the odd prisoner…before the odd prisoner was gobbled up.

The freaks suddenly knew something had gone very, very wrong with their side of things. They _felt _it. Their minds vaguely connected by a common purpose and held in sway to the power of the odd prisoner, they were suddenly freed of that constraint. And like how the turbo-whirling blades of a steam turbine are freed of their shafts, they went _wild_.

The coveralls-clad midget-creatures picked up tools and attacked the freaks that looked like humans with more than a few limbs. Then those meta-humans with extra limbs attacked the midget creatures, also attacking the flying creatures and the things with the green skin. Outbursts of destructive violence, out of control, the freaks were going _nuts_--killing each other as much as they killed themselves. Running into parts of machines, picking up tools and killing things that didn't look like them (even if they were working alongside each other as buddies not an hour ago), hitting and biting, smacking and whacking, now _this _is a ruckus.

Then the unseen servants were also doing some killing. They killed, slaughtered, _obliterated _the enemies of Heather. The freaks didn't die in as dramatic a fashion as their human boss-man. Didn't mean that there wasn't at least _some _drama-value in how they went out--squealing and shrieking in that other-worldly language of theirs, not believing that something scarier and freakier than they were was doing the killing--that is, killing _all _the freaks. By the time the unseen servants were done, they had obliterated all the freaks in this tower. _All _the freaks, all of them ranging from the butchers and the bakers to the damned candle-stick makers. Didn't take too long, either.

…

As is usually the case when the job is done, the unseen servants were gone--this time with their ethereal bellies carrying bits of the bald-headed bastard. Even if a person couldn't see the unseen servants when they were here, a person could see what they had done. Once summoned, the unseen servants seek to get the job done and make it done very thoroughly. As for Jimmy's body, the unseen servants had somehow seen fit to take that away too--respectfully so, not eating it. That's not what Heather wanted. The unseen servants having done their thing, this now left the conquerors of this place standing alone--Heather and Intemelessy.

Heather thought about conquerors and those conquered. To think, the people who built this place who knows how long ago--the conquerors--had conquered their own damn selves--a people long-gone, like the Ancient Egyptians, the Ancient Mayans, the Ancient Greeks, all kinds of ancients… No, worse than that. Though not even here for an hour, Heather didn't see any of the descendants of this world's people and had the idea that there weren't any of them left.

The girl also knew that the makers of this world's civilization were a people long-gone. That _other _sense was telling her that the movers and shakers of rulership, the families of wealth and power, got so full of themselves and so bored that they had themselves a great big old war that was the mother of all wars up to that point in that civilization. So the rich idiots went to war with the technology they had and with nobody to tell them that it might not be a good idea to actually use the powerful stuff on a planet's surface (because anybody who told them anything usually ended up not being alive anymore…or worse).

From the looks of things, after the fall, it looked as if this world moved onto new management. Heather saw the banners on the huge beige-marble walls, massive banners that could've each covered the height of a house. They were _red _banners emblazoned with some kind of eye symbol. Another part of Heather knew who the eye-symbol represented, yet her conscious mind couldn't put a name to the dude.

It wasn't a symbol belonging to the odd prisoner, though. No, it was like maybe the odd prisoner took some cues and clues from somebody else--some other person from some version of Earth or another who finally figured out that there are other worlds besides the one they're living on. Then they figure out that, hey, some of those old stories about sorcerers and monsters might not just be fairy-tales and kids' stuff. Politicians of your world might be all about praising religion in public and say that they're open to the ideas of other worlds with people on 'em--even if they're not human people. Why not? Heaven is another world, right? You won't catch a politician from a Western or Middle-Eastern country bad-mouthing the potential existence of Heaven--even if that politician worships Satan in private.

But the hard-core truth is, for all their voter-pleasing talk of accepting religious, scientific or otherwise seemingly speculative talk of other worlds, that's not what the politicians make the teachers teach the kids. Teachers usually end up teaching kids that talk of _other worlds _is just crazy-talk. There's only _one _world, and the rich idiots in charge set things up as so teachers tell you that there's only one world--and only _one _way to rule it. _Their _way.

Yes indeed, the political players of this world apart from yours definitely had their way, even if it was the way of death for their civilization in the end. Heather walked along the blood-colored carpet, eyes looking but her mind doing the seeing. This was some kind of future, right? Could _this _all that was going to be left of the Earth? Just a smattering of super-awesome buildings reaching skyward in the aftermath of some ultimate final war between the morons in charge of the world?

No, worse than morons. They really were _idiots_--just what Heather was thinking about before_._ There's a difference between morons and idiots, by the way--a _moron_ being worse. A _moron _is someone who has at least enough intellectual capability to take a normal place in society but needs supervision. An _idiot _is abso-freaking-loutely incapable of learning at all. A _moron _is worse because a _moron _can get up, go out and raise some Hell. Just think about the kind of Hell caused by the morons who ran this world--wiping themselves out as so none of them could be around. Maybe years of inbreeding among the families in charge of this world made them _incapable _of learning that it just might be possible to wipe out all human civilization. But given the fantasy stylings of this high-tech throne-room, it looks like they didn't learn, couldn't learn. "_You will stop_," came Intemelessy's shout from across the throne-room.

_Huh?_ Heather did stop a few paces from the platinum-metal throne where the odd prisoner once sat--a throne that actually had cushions for the rear-end and one's back in addition to being encrusted with rubies along the outer edges. A throne of rubies in platinum, set on a platform of blood-colored carpeting, there was most definitely a _red _thing going on here--even with the cushions. No doubt, a civilization that could make mountain-sized castle-towers and anti-nuke force-fields could probably make some really kick-ass comfy cushions.

Though the girl wanted to have herself a seat--one seat in particular--Intemelessy's shout kept her from doing so. Heather didn't hear Intemelessy move with that fast speed of hers, but that might have been because of being distracted by the sight of the platinum throne on the red-carpet platform. _A crimson throne, _thought Heather. And that was about as close as Heather got to naming the entity for whom this throne was _actually _made for.

That was, before Intemelessy went behind the throne--began doing something back there. "What are you doing?" asked Heather. "You're not gonna…?"

"Distance yourself to at least nine meters from this platform," said Intemelessy, not answering Heather's question just yet. Yes indeed, the robotic aspect of the synthetic girl was not caring for human things of interaction like _manners _at this mission-critical moment. Heather just might count herself lucky that Intemelessy cared enough to not start blasting until those nine-meters' worth of steps were taken.

And _blasting, _Intemelessy did. That techno-tomfoolery the synthetic girl did behind the throne was done to disable the technology which kept it from being destroyed. This time, that old saying about the power behind the throne ended up being more literally true than metaphorically. Not for long, because Intemelessy's nuke-pistols were set to constant--bright blazing energy streaming from the pistols to make the platinum of the throne--platinum alloy and other metals--start to glow yellow-white in melting.

For a while, the throne looked like wax or plastic in a blazing glow of glory--staying a glowing bright red for a while, the red of metal getting hot. And then it became yellow-hot, sagging in on itself. Only when it was a roughly circular mound of molten metal did Intemelessy release pressure on the triggers of her nuke-pistols. Whatever safety measures there were built into the floor and ceilings of this place made it as so the molten throne suddenly chilled to become solid metal again--albeit no longer chair-shaped.

_Great, now the throne looks like a great big pile of metal poo, _thought Heather. "You didn't have to do that, Intemelessy."

Though the dual set of nuclear pistols were now safely in hip-holsters, there was no doubt that Intemelessy would have aimed them at Heather had things gone differently--if Heather had taken to sitting upon the red throne, that kind of _differently. _So what Intemelessy said next had the truth of potential action behind it.

"Negative. I did have to do it," said Intemelessy--standing with shorts-bared legs apart and hands near pistols. "You must not become a threat in league with that which seeks to destroy the worlds."

Heather went wide-mouthed. Raising your voice at somebody or something armed with a pair of thermonuclear weapons might not be a good idea, but that's what happened--Heather getting all loud. "You're actually saying that I was gonna be on _their _side? _And_ you're threatening to shoot me?" Heather's voice became higher in pitch and volume. "_Oh my god! I can't believe you! All we've been through together…!_"

"All that we have been through has been to end a threat. It has not been for the sake of bringing about another," said Intemelessy. "The core directives of my core programming have been set to the stability and defense of the worlds. Though your survival was ordered by Mr. Thunderhorse, such orders are subservient to those maintaining the metaphysical viability of the multiple universes, that which keeps the universes apart."

"Separate but equal, huh?" asked Heather. "Like what they used to tell Native Americans and black people a long time ago?"

This is said even though Heather has the appearance of a Caucasian human female--the politically correct way of saying _white girl_. As to how referring to the Caucuses region of Eastern Europe came to mean all white people in your world, from all over your world, you go figure it out. And while you're at it, go look up why human-people hate the Hell out of each other because the outer surfaces of their meat-bodies come in different colors and they don't all make the same kinds of mouth-sounds to communicate thoughts.

Still, though our girl _was _feeling pretty heated about Intemelessy's attitude, there was the rational part of her mind saying that Intemelessy was in the right. It takes a big person back off from an argument when one side is on the side of what's good. And though petite-and-skinny Heather isn't exactly a towering giant, the girl is big in ways not visible to naked eyes. More like, her bigness was visible to the mind's eye.

"Yeah, you win," said Heather. "I guess this is when we get out of here, huh? Exit, stage right?"

Intemelessy gave a nod before exhibiting some of her own abilities. Unlike Heather, Intemelessy's abilities came from machinery--technology build inside of her. Using the same kind of technology that allowed Intemelessy to reach Heather's world--a kind of technology that was similar to what went into the strange machines--the synthetic girl opened a way between worlds to leave. Exit, stage right.


	21. Chapter 21

_Silent Hill: Disciples of The Crimson Tome _

by Egglesplork

Chapter 21

… 1. …

Okay and alright. All the really important stuff that had to be done, it's done. One side beat the other side in the final showdown, and that's a wrap for the business ends of things. If this was a cowboy story, then the dude in work-clothes and a white hat would've already killed the moustache-twirling bad guy in black in a disturbingly bloodless final gunfight. Then the guy in the white hat would be on his horse and ride off into the blood-colored light of the dying day. Or, if this was a space-fantasy movie (those things calling themselves science fiction even if it's loaded with characters all full of fantasy-style magical powers and crap), then there would've already been some cheeseball special effects-filled final battle scene where the main good-guy would've faced off against the main bad guy in a duel involving laser-swords and mind-powers. (Don't try to understand why sci-fi space heroes always end up fighting with magic powers and swords even if they've got space-ships, energy cannons and laser pistols. You'll never understand if you try to be logical.) Then the good guys go planet-side to have a feast after having saved the galaxy. Or maybe, if this was one of those gosh-damned medical dramas your mom likes to watch, the sexy young doctor guy or gal would've already finished the patient's operation--pulls down the face mask, looks grimly at the dead thing on the operating table and says, _Call it. _

We're calling it right now. The real story's over. So, the good cowboy killed the bad guy. Or the sci-fi heroes beat the space-emperor with magic. Or the sexy doctor is done with the operation. Whatever. We're done here. What happens next is just so much aftermath.

Well if that's the case, why haven't we rolled the credits? Show's over. Fade to black. Play the drop-dead awesome mood-music and scroll the names and titles of all the people behind the scenes--illuminated letters on a black background, letters rolling up and out of sight, say good night.

Granted, all the really important loose ends are trussed up all neat and tidy. Grandma and her prize-winning stitch work skills would've approved. Well, except grandma would've probably pointed out that not _all _the ends are tied up--probably not to everyone's satisfaction. (_You missed something, dear._) There are still some people who are listening to this and thinking, _But what about…? _There's one in every crowd.

Not to worry, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages. We're not gonna let certain folks go away feeling left out because there _is _some stuff that wants getting done. Not that it _needs _getting done. Rather, it's wanting to get done. Heather's party did it's thing, and so your world won't end up like Silent Hill or Intemelessy's world any time soon. Maybe your world is good to go for another ten years, maybe another ten thousand. Depends… For now, though, things are fine. And depending on your point of view, things are just about to get finer still.

…

"I done already got contact with the lady," said Pullahein, driving this car, talking to Wright in the front passenger seat. "Ain't gonna be a problem. Unless yer nervous 'bout this sorta business."

"Not especially nervous, sir," said Wright, looking ahead. Meaning, he was on the nervous side. He never thought his job as a prison guard would mutate into the sort of stuff he never even would have believed in.

"Yeah, it's always a wee bit on the shaky side fer newbies to this kinda business," responded Pullahein. "All the same, we gotta do this 'cause ain't much of anybody else paid fer this kinda work. In fact, somebody so much as _breathe a hint _'bout what we do, government's gonna full-deny any involvement with us. Just like that Roswell kinda mess. Only _crazy _people believe in this. Heh... Must make us the craziest kinda people in this existence. And it's gonna be even crazier fer that creep we're gonna get, too."

...

It's sunset-time in the city. Don't worry about the name of the city, doesn't matter. America is all full of urban places that nobody's ever heard of before, let alone been to. Not every place can be a Philadelphia or a Portland. And forget about New York. Who the fork _hasn't _heard about New York by now? Some passable city, it's pretty much like every other American city yet no city you've been to--too busy flocking to Washington or (heaven help you) Los Angeles.

If you've seen one American city, you know the deal. Big corporate and government office-buildings reaching up to the sky, streets full of cars and trucks, dudes in business suits and young college kids concentrated in the downtown, it's that kind of setup. Meanwhile, the rest of the city beyond downtown is full of people down on their luck and who have to work eight days a week just to pay bills--the gritty industrial outskirts with factories, row-houses and apartment buildings. The dudes in suits couldn't give a flying fork about the periphery. Downtown is where it's at.

And downtown is where we are for what's going to happen. Sunset, Thursday evening into night, the downtown bar is all full of millionaire movers and shakers who meet in this places like this exactly because this is a city that nobody really cares about. In this no-name city, there are no nosey reporters to take photos of these financial masters of the universe doing what they want, when they want after making millions by just sitting in offices and acting really, really important. It's getting into night now, though. Time to have some meals at overpriced restaurants before going off to bang some whores, snort some nose-candy, and party-down in general.

The Red Circle is one of those nightclub-bars where the people in suits get a start to the after-dinner recreation. Beyond the front entrance that's well-guarded with muscle-bound bouncers and armed security, inside the place, it's got the lights down low and all the tables occupied--especially along the wood-paneled walls. Behind the drinking bar is the bartender--a bald-headed man dressed like somebody out of the 1800s--an outfit of vest, white shirt and black pants. This bar is old and respected, so he has to dress the part. By the way, bald as the bartender is, he has _no _relation to a certain _other _bald dude who isn't of concern anymore.

All the businessmen and politicians, the hospital directors and lawyers, all the types, they come here to do whatever. It's a one-stop shop for not-quite-legal goods and services that nevertheless get sold and consumed despite being illegal for over sixty years. (Yeah, the war on drugs is going quite well indeed--probably just as well as the war on terror.)

Hmm, there's something to be said about the name of this fancy-pants night-club--The Red Circle. Something symbolic. Yet talk of that symbolism would probably be lost on the coke-heads and h-addicts who come here to get laid by _escorts _(just a legit name for whores, really) as much as they have to get laid out by substances. Forget those idiots for now.

Okay, here's a hint. What can a circle stand for? A circle can stand for a cycle--like how seasons always come around every year. Or let's put it more cynically. What goes around, comes around. To go around, to go around again, go around… And guess what? Something else is about to come around right about now in this place--which is why we're here.

One particular millionaire, rubbing elbows with the politicos and other business bozos, he was near the far-right end of the bar. The dude was already into his sixth Bloody Mary. Heh, elbows aren't the _only _parts of the anatomy he planned on getting rubbed tonight. But… Rub later, drink now.

All the young hip types may be into their rum-and-cokes, their Manhattan ice teas or whatever mutant concoctions there were swirled together. Not this guy. Nah, he likes his rum as rum, his scotch as it ought to be, and his highballs on a roll. Bloody Marys, he had a thing for them ever since his dad introduced him to them at the age of sixteen--three decades ago now. _Son, meet Bloody Mary._ Since he was set to inherit dad's chunk of the family financial empire, he might as well take up dad's customs. And when this businessman's only legitimate son reaches that age, he plans on giving the same introduction.

A young business emperor can't get too early a start on drinking. Screw the laws that say twenty-one is the legal age for alcohol consumption. In Ancient Rome, teenage citizens drank booze like nobody's business, and that empire turned out just fine for a while. "Ancient Rome ruled," slurred the businessman.

"Ya think so, buddy?" asked somebody sitting to the businessman's right. "I was thinkin' that it got along decent-like for a while. Then the people in charge got sloppy and stupid. Might've had somethin' to do with 'em drinkin' outta lead pipes and eatin' off lead plates. Might've had somethin' to do with tryin' to take over the world and bitin' off more than an empire can chew. All the school-people can't agree on why, though." He smiled. "Then again, school-folks these days don't agree on a damned thing. Them folks get _paid _to disagree. Welcome to postmodernism, pal."

We've heard that accent before--an accent that's very much like a kind of accent to be found somewhere on America's east with certain twists to vowels that originate…somewhere else. And no doubt, we would recognize the lean face of none other than someone who used to be a senior prison-guard at a certain penitentiary deep in a huge forest somewhere. Yet the businessman didn't recognize him. It's not like the businessman will go all wide-eyed and be like, _It's you! _ We would recognize him--even if we've never seen him dress up in a dark-blue business jacket, white shirt and matching slacks. He didn't like dressing up in ridiculous getups like this, less practical than the uniform work-clothes, yet here he was anyway. Dressed like this because it's that whole _when-in-Rome _thing.

The businessman looked to his right and took notice of our guy. After all, interesting accents tend to get lots of attention from high-roller types in society. Show up with a Russian or Middle Eastern accent, and people will think you're some kind of high-powered philosopher-type. And here's a hint for all of you people from a certain big-long gray rock off the coast of Europe. An English accent brought to America will make everybody think that you're nobility. They'll put you in charge of a university department, put you in front of movie cameras, give you careers that pay six figures a year and make you a celebrity.

Now our guy in the blue suit doesn't sound like he's from any of those places. Heh, we know where he's _really _from. But he does have some kind of accent--which is why he's got the businessman's attention.

Since our guy still had the businessman's attention, since the businessman was too piss-drunk to say much anyway, our guy continued. "There's somebody waitin' for ya out back. Won't do to have that meetin' happen out front. Nah, ya gatta go to her. Otherwise, men-folks are bound to get all jealous and what-not." Our guy leaned forward as if he didn't want the rest of this busy place in on a particularly juicy secret. "_The lady must'a heard yer the best at somethin'._" He winked and gave an elbow-nudge. Wink-wink. Nudge-nudge. Say no more. Say no more...

Folks, this is why one of the many nicknames for booze is _liquid courage._ Get some of that stuff in a man who's already chock-full of self-confidence (even while everybody else thinks he's full of something else), and he'll think himself lord and master over all he surveys. Yes-sir-ee-Bob, alcohol is a chemical excuse for a human brain to take off the gloves and go at the world with both fists, thinking that anything seen is something conquerable. Sobriety would rule otherwise and would see this for the ruse it is. Yet the businessman is about as chemically and mentally well-off as bouncy Boris Yeltsin was when he did a jig while trying to win votes.

Let's go, comrades… The businessman knew how to reach the back of this bar even if a noob or new entrant didn't. That is to say, if some members of law enforcement or journalism ever took it into their heads to look around to see how the boss-people partied, they wouldn't immediately see that there's an exit--stage rear. (Exiting in the rear, that's perfectly appropriate for the assholes and pieces of crap who come to this place.)

To get out of this bar anus-fashion, a person has to sort of zig right around the bar into a shadowy corner that's so shadowy it looks like there's nothing but a section of wall there. In fact, there is a section of wall that's actually a door. All one has to do is push on it like one of those flexy joint doors used by waiters to get in and out of a kitchen.

...

The businessman exited this bar. He went down that back hallway, gave that hidden door a push--walking down a semi-dark rear hall lined with industrial-looking doors. Then he was in the back alley.

Then he saw the cutie in the car. Didn't care about the car just yet. He cared about the cute thing driving it. A slender girl in a light cotton springtime dress--a _thin _cotton dress that didn't cling in a slutty way but outlined her figure just enough to show the young lady would look even better out of it.

Then there was her car. Though the vehicle looked new or maybe as if it hadn't been out of the dealer's showroom for more than a year, it wasn't the sort of classy vehicle that the businessman would affiliate himself with. Then again it wasn't exactly that _car _he planned on riding, planning on doing things in the back seat rather than the front seats.

The passenger-side front door opened, this businessman climbed in, closed the door behind him. Never-mind it if the businessman failed to notice how the door seemed to open with nobody near it. He was just used to having doors opened for him, and drunk dudes aren't the most perceptive of people. People who open doors for rich idiots may as well be invisible anyway.

Anyway, the business dude was in the car. The car door _whumped _shut. He looked leeringly at her even if it was supposed to be a winning smile, coming out all wrong because he was _that _plastered. Doesn't matter, because the cutie in the light-cotton dress smiled back before putting this car in gear and driving off into the night. And now, we're off to the races.

When this vehicle seemed to take a particularly quick-feeling and savage right turn, the businessman thought he was going to be sick. It more felt like the whole world swirled out of sight. He just mentally played that perception off as being a misperception, as maybe something to do with the heady stuff he was downing back at the club's bar. That's Bloody Mary for you. You don't screw her. It's more like it's her screwing _you._

Next thing he knew, this car was zooming along a highway--a really, _really _dark highway. He squinted his eyes in trying to get a good look at what was outside. For the record, booze does _not _grant super-vision. Alcohol grants anti-vision, capable of even making dead people look sexy. Some folks out there think that dead folks are sexy anyway… Can't help you there. Booze-vision was not helping him see the dark landscape this vehicle was zooming through--headlights blazing on the highway ahead, the peripheral light only allowing the sight of quick blurs, of wreckage on the sides of the road.

Come to think of it, that _is _some freaky vehicular wreckage even seen in blurred passes by. Not that the businessman would ever say a lower-classed word like _freaky, _yet that's what it looked like. And there were also maybe some pretty freaky structures off in the dark distance beyond the sides of this darkened highway--a dark highway under a strangely starless yet infinitely dark sky, darker than the darkness of the universe...

If you have a pretty damned good idea about what the Hell is going on here, don't spoil it for everybody who doesn't. And if you've got a sneaking suspicion of what just has to happen next because it makes perfect sense in a poetic justice sort of way, don't go shouting _that _out, either. Most of you've been a pretty civil set of listening ears so far. Those of you trying to shout at the people in the world of this story, remember what was said before--about folks trying to yell at Heather about what to do next. What we're seeing is being seen through the mind's eye of the storyteller, apart and afar from those hearing the tale.

Before the…ah, _climax _of this moment, it's only fair that the businessman's role in this story be revealed in a more explicit manner. Even more fair is how he should have recognized that slender young woman. Even if he never knew her personally, even if _he killed her, _the man should have recognized her from courtroom photographs.

So who's driving this thing? No, it's not Heather. Heather's not dead. And there's no way our girl--with all her outfits of tight jeans and tank-tops worn with dollar-store sneakers--would just as soon put on a friggin' _dress _as the Devil himself would dress up like Little Bo Peep and participate in your local elementary-school play before the local parents sell brownies to raise money for auditorium repairs. (Now if those happen to be _hash _brownies, maybe Old Scratch would be open to negotiations on the matter.)

Yes, that's exactly who or what the cutie was. It was an easy trick for her to keep both sides of her face looking all neat and pretty to lure the drunk bastard into the car. Now for shock value, the young lady turned to face the drunk bastard. The side of her face wrecked in the drunk-driving accident--the accident caused by the business bastard riding in the passenger-side front seat, that was back to its smashed-in appearance.

It was this face that the drunk bastard saw when he turned to look. "It's _you!_" he blurted. Then, as if we didn't hear him the first time, "_It's you!_"

Well, duh. Who else would it be? Everybody has to be somebody, right? Otherwise, they would be nobody and wouldn't exist--just like ghosts. Some jokers might argue that ghosts don't exist, maybe the same kind of people who don't believe in global warming or the hole in the ozone layer. Yet in this case...

The businessman did what Jimmy tried doing some time ago. That is to say, the businessman was yanking on the door (jammed shut), banging on the window (not breaking no matter how hard he banged) and wanting to _get the Hell out. _Then he stopped, turning his head to look ahead out the front windshield as there was a sudden bright glow.

It was a really bright pair of really bright headlights along with a horn coming full blast--sounding higher-pitched in coming because of that Doppler effect you learned about in high-school physics class, something one should have learned even after sampling what they served at last night's elementary-school fundraiser. Speaking of physics, we're about to have a live demonstration of something Newtonian right about…_now. _

There was maybe a hundredth of a second in which the businessman saw who was driving the car coming full-speed, full headlights and full horn-blast in this direction--a certain other young man who met his end under unjust circumstances. It was Jimmy. He was smiling. Looking good for somebody sent to jail and skinned alive to be made dead.

Next was an _explosive _impact, sounding like a sneak preview to the end of the world. One world, at least. And that was it for the rich bastard who got drunk, thought he got away with murder but didn't.

One unfortunate thing about this moment was how it happened with such speed and severity that the bastard businessman only experienced a brief moment of intense pain as his body was yoinked and shredded. But painful, it was. Die, he did. Killed by the force, he had been--the force of impact. And because he died in this place, the police of the world he came from would never find what was left of his corpse.

…

2.

…

Now we're somewhere else. We're back to a human-run world. And we're in another city. Again, don't ask what American city. Suffice to say it's another one of those places that you've never been to before.

They started pounding away at the wall early that morning. Big-loud wall-shaking _whumps_ muffled by drywall and plaster sounded out and pounded out as they went to work. No that they were trying to bring down the house, because this isn't a house. It's an apartment building, and it's more like they were trying to bring down something else--break down something else.

Doing this legally took a butt-load of official permissions and expensive permits from various anal-retentive municipal government agencies-- zoning council, department of housing, city revenue services, fire department, police department, even the damned animal control people. Yeah, for a country in which all government agencies are allegedly going broke, there sure are a lot of city departments in which relatives of important people can sit around to get paid for being official, take in cash they don't need (them being millionaires) and be important too.

In a lot of scary movies, the cops don't show up until after the party's over. Hey folks, the party already is over, remember? We're just cleaning up, tying up some loose ends and all. The police, firefighters, all of those dudes of public safety come in their waves of squad cars to reassert normalcy and order to a situation that would otherwise be in-freaking-sane. (Unless its a disaster flick or post-apocalyptic sci-fi thing. Then the police and firefighters get wiped out and broken up at the beginning.) The cops already showed up for that rich asshole who got Jimmy thrown into the big house--showed up after the before-mentioned anus masquerading as a human being was killed by forces beyond official reckoning. And right about now, maybe it's time one reckoned that some folks from public safety come for a certain young man who was once trapped in the apartment in a way similar to the Henry Townsend incident.

In the midst of our travels and permutations throughout the worlds, did we forget about the a certain young man trapped in an apartment at the very beginning of this tale? Was he forgotten--the young man in that apartment with all the _banging _coming from behind the walls, floor and even the freaking ceiling? It's like that song some American terrorists sing about wanting to destroy the federal government and resurrecting the Confederacy: _Wish I was in the land of cotton... Gone, but not forgotten._ So, again, was he forgotten?

Speaking of destruction, one more good solid blow obliterated the airtight seal between the outside world and the young man's apartment. After that definitive _whump, _the polygonal metal head of the sledgehammer briefly stayed put after having punched through the top of the door. A pair of male eyes looked through the fist-sized hole, then quickly withdrew amidst a spate of coughing.

"_Jee-e-ezus Ch-e-e-e-rist!_ Stinks like a motherforker!" said one of the two men out there. "We gonna need hazmat or what?"

Hazmat, as in, _hazardous materials. _When working the city, working the city's buildings, all kinds of fun surprises are bound to show up in abandoned places. Abandoned places of formerly human habitation sometimes double for places where toxic wastes are stored. Not legally, of course. But more often, abandoned places are also where drugs get stashed --the buyers and sellers in not-so-legal pharmaceuticals putting garbage and crap all over the place to keep people out, keep them from being nosy, probably wrecking noses in the process. Drug dealers and toxic wastes aside, there are times in which dead things gets piled up or dumped in.

Well, this is all brought up because of what the two men in coveralls found after their sledgehammers pounded a hole in the front door. They actually had to pound through about five inches of plaster, an inch of drywall before that--because this apartment's front door was hidden behind the stuff. And they temporarily stopped because of the probably-very-toxic gasses which wafted out hot and nasty from the hole pounded in the apartment's front door.

Chances are, the apartment management wasn't going to wait around for another few weeks' worth of local government forms and permits to get filed and what-not to finish this job. The paperwork around hazardous materials was worth all kinds of expensive bureaucratic trouble--more city bureaucrat paperwork, more filing fees, more money for rich relatives of those elected to city government.

So these two guys weren't going to be told to file that paperwork. They had a job to do. And they were going to get it done.

Didn't mean that they had to put up with the _smell. _This wasn't the first time they had done some minor demolition and run into something stinking bad as anything, so they were prepared. They went out to their van and came back with a set of big industrial-looking portable fans blowing away from the newly revealed apartment door as they continued their work--destroying the rest of the smashed door. Despite the industrial fans, the gasses brought tears to their eyes and made their noses drip like faucets, thoughts going to all the kinds of cancer contributed to by second-hand cigarette smoke, heavy vehicle exhaust and all the other basic facts of life related to breathing city air.

And when the door was completely demolished, the two men in work-clothes came into the apartment with sledgehammers at the ready. It almost looked as if the two guys were set to pound the Hell out of whatever was causing them so much airborne misery. That is to say, they found what had to be found.

As seen by the sunset-colored light glowing through a grimed-over window, a man was sitting at the table, or what was left of a man--a well-preserved corpse in business-casual clothes. The skin was somewhat wrinkled-looking if one squinted or got close, but the preserving chemicals had done a good job in keeping the body from looking too much like something out of a zombie flick. Tubes looped through sleeves no doubt connected into the body, tubes connected to jars of _something _on the table. Along with the jars were some black feathers and a big book with a dull-red cover. A _tome _of a book, one might say. Weirder still was the graffiti painted on the wall. It read, _Egglesplork, Enrico and Satyr modded the Silent Hill 3 game into Resident Evil 4! Check out YouTube!_

None of that made sense to the men paid to smash down and inspect the once-hidden apartment. Not the corpse next to the book, not the chemicals hooked to the corpse, not the black feathers, and sure as Hell not the gaffiti. And what the Hell is a _YouTube?_

The truth is, Mel Horowitz never left his apartment. Not while he was still alive, that is. Well gosh, how can a dead dude be so helpful to Heather otherwise? Dead people aren't supposed to be so..._lively_. So what in the name of Nebuchadnezzar is going on here? _Silent Hill _kind of stuff is going on here, that's what.

When that whole trapped-in-an-apartment thing happened to Henry Townsend, the dude who caused all the trouble was actually quite nearby. His dead body was nearby--actually walled up in Henry-boy's apartment. Henry Townsend had a roommate all that time and didn't even know it. On top of that, the dead jerk wasn't even paying his half of the rent _or _the utilities. That's because dead people usually don't pay rent. And when you're dealing with _Silent Hill _kind of stuff, dead people are the sort of thing that sometimes don't take their deaths lying down.

Well, same thing here. Except this bastard Mel wasn't out to trap some hapless bachelor roomie in his own pad. Mel trapped his own damned self--the asshole. Then this jerk made it as so the apartment building's super took the idea in mind to have the apartment door walled up. When you've got real-life magic, even if you're real dead, you can do that. You've got to admit, it's probably a Hell of a lot more positive than shaving one's head, wearing a freaky red robe and plotting the downfall of various human civilizations.

What gives? Why are we talking about Mel like this? Didn't he help Heather out--giving our girl those health drinks and what-not? Dude even hooked Heather up with a bodyguard who was easy on the eyes and good at kicking ass. If not for him, if not for Mel passing word that the odd prisoner was up to no good--as did Jimmy in sending a letter--how could he have led Heather into stopping that evil plot? Wasn't Mel one of the _good guys_? Wasn't he?

Hate to break it to you, folks, but it has to be said. Mel Horowitz was one bad-ass bastard when he was alive--doing some really serious crap he wasn't supposed to do, fooling with stuff that no mere human being has any business messing around with. It goes something like this. You don't give some the American President's codes to nuclear annihilation to a twelve-year-old kid, okay? The brat's liable to tell all his online pals all about 'em. Next thing you know, all the horizons of all the countries flare bright-white, say goodnight, civilization's last fight... Likewise, you give a mere human being access to forces from beyond and holes in reality. Like that twelve-year-old kid, there are some things that human beings at this level of civilization just have to leave along, damn it.

Mel Horowitz used to go about his daily life as a college student--part-timing it with some materials he borrowed from his university's local anthropological collection of primary-source material about the history and religion of a certain town. Okay, so the texts were _maybe _locked away in the special archives that only the university librarians could get to upon special request. And he _maybe _forged some signatures. After getting his grubby, scheming hands on the stuff, he _maybe _followed some rituals to the point of _maybe _killing some people and sort of using their dead bodies.

Ah well, it's not like he killed people in _this _world. And it's not like the cops of some worlds can cut through another dimension to catch him. So it's probably okay, right?

_Maybe, sort of, probably, _but...no. Just like that hypothetical twelve-year-old who gets hands on the doomsday codes to the President's nuclear fireworks (best light show _ever_) Mel and his demonically dandifying shenanigans were no good for the stability of the universe--the multiple universes. That's just like the odd prisoner. In fact, to draw the connection between Mel and the odd prisoner...

No, the odd prisoner was _not _Mel's father. That plot twist was done already in a sci-fi movie already. You know, the one where one of the main bad guys lops off one of the young whippersnapper's hands and says, _I am your father_? All of you Sigmund Freud cultists can interpret that any damned way you like. (Never mind if Freud _was _a nymphomaniac coke-head.) So the odd prisoner and Mel don't have paternity issues, nor were either of those evil scumbags coke-heads. Nah, but they _were _brothers both out to do the wrong thing.

The only difference was, things didn't go well for Mel. He messed up big-time when doing one of those things he shouldn't have been doing in the first place. He ended up in some hard-core trouble with entities that saw him for the weakling mortal he was and treated him accordingly. Call them trans-dimensional entities if you're a sci-fi space fanatic. Call them demons if you believe in the boogeymen supernatural explanation. Call them fart-faced if you want. Just don't try to call them into your world like Mel did and think you can control them.

Mel messed up in screwing around with those forces, but the odd prisoner didn't--the odd prisoner getting off lucky for a while. When Mel holed himself up, he was doing his damnedest to not let _them _get him. Hah, not even _death _could stop those trans-dimensional demon-things from getting somebody. And _that _was when we ran into a very, very guilty-feeling Mel Horowitz--a faction of those other-worldly forces giving Mel a chance to undo at least a teeny tiny little bit of what he did. That's perfectly okay. Mel is going to have all of eternity to make up for what he did. When you're dead, you have more than all the time in the world--more than _all _the worlds.

...

And so we've got most all the loose ends right there, this tale with all its weaving, interwoven threads of fate and time to form one great big tapestry that we're closing off right about now. Just as the fabric of reality is some kind of metaphysical thread-work, this tale is its own kind of woven work. Well okay, the threads of fate and time will keep going on for Pullahein and Wright, as we just saw. Jimmy and the odd prisoner, they're both goners. The dead woman was dead before we got the party started, so we need not worry about her anymore. And Mel... Because of what he did before we met him, Mel can go to Hell. He won't though--there being no rest for the wicked and all that. (That leads straight into the downsides of being dead--no closing time of business, no weekends, and you sure as sin don't get any holidays.) Even if we won't see where the threads of fate and time are taking them, the threads that we see are ended off nicely enough.

But some of you are all, _What about Heather? Don't forget Intemelessy, either. _Don't worry. We were just getting to that part next. We won't forget about shortie demon-girl and her android-girl sidekick. And there's no doubt that some of us will forget about Intemelessy, though Heather would probably burn your ears with a landfill's worth of trash talk for even thinking about forgetting her. And don't forget that girl can do things with her mind if you do anything to piss her off. Too bad, for all of her other-worldly abilities and all of her multimillion-dollar bank accounts, Heather couldn't keep Intemelessy from leaving.

...

Heather was sitting at the inappropriately named kitchen table--with us still putting aside the fact that the apartment just has a kitchenette instead of a full kitchen, the girl dressed in yet another outfit of tight jeans and middie-top. Sunset-toned light glowed through the window, the light on her face and short-cut blonde hair, her gold-colored eyes just staring out at the outline of city buildings...

That could have been a trick of the light, how the sunset tones of the illumination made her green-hazel eyes seem to be another color. But we're familiar enough with Heather to know that such might not be the case. After all, an old saying goes about eyes being windows to the soul. Maybe Heather's soul had been changed a bit after the deed having been done. And to think those eyes of hers were blurred with tears an hour ago.

Not good enough, if life was fair. Life is not fair. A girl can do her part to save all of reality--all the realities--from being in danger. Save the world? Screw that. Heather's party of three, then two, then three again--it saved _all _the known worlds. And look at the reward the girl gets.

You didn't hear it from this tale, but there was another party of people who did their part to save the fabric of reality. Maybe you remember that brief fairy tale the dead lady told Jimmy--the summarized thing about the hero who stopped the evil man who wanted to make all the worlds broken? (Stopped the bad man, we hope.) Well, guess what? That wasn't necessarily a fairy tale. That actually happened--at least in the worlds local to Heather's reality. A hero did stop the very bad man who wanted to break all the worlds, the very bad man who did the sorts of things that the odd prisoner later took up trying to do himself. You won't be told here what happened to that hero and his party--how some of his party was almost totally killed off, how he stopped the very bad man and how the hero has to keep on going, not necessarily riding off into the sunset. If you want to know about that hero, then ask somebody about some tall dude with creepy blue eyes, a dude named Roland--a dude who didn't necessarily get a hero's reward for deeds done.

One would at least have expected Heather to have Intemelessy, that whole thing about struggles bringing people closer together. Yeah, and we've got people frowning on the notion of two people of the same sex shackin' up together. And some other people are probably just about as uncomfortable with the notion of one of those people not being a real person, and we're not talking about Heather and her inhuman ancestry. That's okay. Times change, and attitudes have to change right along with them. Two girls living together will be generally accepted some day. And if it makes those not-too-happy people happy after all, Intemelessy just up and left Heather all alone.

We weren't there a few hours ago when Intemelessy did leave, and there was plenty of drama to be had, drama to be heard. Heather's voice was ragged with anger mixed in with tears, the girl in blue-jeans and tank-top looking set to jump on Intemelessy or something.

_You really want to leave me? You want to go out there, fighting forever, probably get yourself killed or destroyed or whatever? I thought robots were supposed to be logical! Do you really think you can save all the messed-up worlds out there? _Then Heather just started yelling. _Then... Go! I don't need you! I don't need anybody! _

Heather did that trick of hers with the apartment's door, using her mind to make it open as so Intemelessy could walk out. Then Heather made the door _slam _shut--not caring if the door came close to whacking Intemelessy in the butt. With her synthetic flesh and alloy skeleton, it wouldn't hurt her anyway--even if Heather hoped it would.

Heather was hurting, that was for sure. This much time after Intemelessy left, the girl was still sitting at the kitchen table and watching the sunset. Intemelessy wouldn't be riding off into the sunset after leaving, not the sunset of this world. Android-girl can slip out of realities as easily as somebody can open a door and walk through it--leaving this reality for good. There would be no chasing after her.

No, Heather wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. Being crazy-rich and all, the girl doesn't have to go anywhere, not having to do much of anything. Besides, maybe a decade or so down the line, Heather could pay some people to _make _her an Intemelessy--or at least another android-girl who looks exactly like the original. Or maybe before then, Heather would get over this latest round of nonsense involving _that _town--just like getting over those other times.

And that's just the thing. Silent Hill is still there. Maybe some of you are in worlds where there is no Silent Hill. Or so you think. That place probably goes by a different name in your world, that's all. Rumor has it that there's a world out there in which a certain town had to be abandoned because of underground fires--looking an awful lot like a certain place we know about. Abandoned due to underground fires, that's the official explanation. (Westalia, they call it? Somewhere out in Pennsylvania?) Then there's a world where the whole damned town vanished--buildings, streets and all. Nobody knows why. And we're only talking abandoned towns in worlds run by human folks. We won't even start talking about the worlds in which the people living in cities or hives or whatever aren't _human _people. They've also got a Silent Hill even if they call it _Yargsplakapaka _or something otherwise unpronounceable to our kinds of mouths.

So you don't think you have a Silent Hill? Think again. Every world has a Silent Hill. Meanwhile, you'd best believe the Silent Hill in Heather's world is still there--in lots of versions of _there._ And this won't be the last time Heather or at least some version of Heather has business to get done there.

25


End file.
